Based on decades of scientific research and clinical experience, Safe and Effective Exercise for Overweight Youth provides a scientifically supported and clinically relevant source of information that clinical health care providers, educators, public health, and fitness professionals may use to promote physical activity in overweight and obese yout
Melinda S. Sothern, PhD, CEP is a licensed clinical exercise physiologist and Professor (tenure) in the LSUHSC School of Public Health (Behavioral and Community Health Sciences Program) and School of Medicine (Department of Pediatrics) in New Orleans, LA, and the Prevention of Childhood Obesity Laboratory at the LSU Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. She is the recipient of the LSUHSC School of Public Health Jim Finks Endowed Chair in Health Promotion.
Dr. Sothern's research is widely published in a multitude of peer-reviewed scientific journals and in three scientific textbooks, Safe and Effective Exercise for Overweight Youth (CRC Press, 2014), The Handbook of Pediatric Obesity: Clinical Management (Taylor and Francis, 2006), and The Handbook of Pediatric Obesity: Etiology, Pathophysiology and Prevention (Taylor and Francis, 2005). She also senior-authored a popular press book for parents of overweight children entitled Trim Kids (Harper Collins, 2001). The Trim Kids program is recognized by the National Cancer Institute as a Research Tested Intervention Program and is acknowledged by the U. S. Surgeon General for its community dissemination in YMCA centers in Louisiana.
Dr. Sothern was the 2009 recipient of the Obesity Society's Oded Bar Or Award for Excellence in Pediatric Obesity Research, the 2008 recipient of the Cecil J. Picard Award for Excellence in Education to Prevent Childhood Obesity in Louisiana, and was selected as one of the Top Ten Female Achievers by New Orleans magazine. She recently received the 2014 Allen Copping Award for Excellence in Teaching at the LSUHSC School of Public Health, was honored with a proclamation by the New Orleans City Council as the outstanding alumna of the Human Performance and Health Promotion Program, and received Dr. Vane Wilson Award in recognition of excellent work and service in the field of human performance and health promotion in May
