Steven Gortmaker is the professor of the practice of health sociology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and co-director of the School’s Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity (HPRC) whose mission is to improve nutrition and physical activity and reduce obesity and chronic disease risk among children, youth, and their families. His research is particularly focused on the health of children and adolescents living in poverty and minority populations. The major goal of Gortmaker’s research is to identify modifiable risks for morbidity and mortality in the young, and to both initiate and evaluate interventions to improve these outcomes.