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  Children's Hospital Research  Children's Hospital Labs
Alison Field, ScD  Children's logo  Harvard logo
 Alison Field, ScD
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   Department  Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine
   Hospital Title  Associate in Medicine
   Academic Title  Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
   Phone  617-355-3735
   Fax  617-730-0815
   Email  Alison Field
   Location  300 Longwood Avenue
333 Longwood-6
Boston MA 02115
Research Overview

Alison Field studies the eating patterns and weight control behaviors that lead to eating disorders and obesity. Her work is aimed at identifying common risk factors that promote excessive weight gain, excessive weight concerns, and unhealthy weight control behaviors and which could serve as targets for interventions.

She is a co-founder of the Growing Up Today Study, which was established in 1996 to assess the predictors of dietary intake, activity, and weight gain during a four-year period. Her research within the study is primarily related to the epidemiology of weight gain, weight concerns, weight control practices, and bulimic behaviors in 16,800 children of women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study II. She is the principal investigator on the NIH grant to continue following the Growing Up Today Study cohort from 2002 to 2007 to investigate determinants of binge eating, purging (i.e., use of vomiting or laxatives) and eating disorders of at least subsyndromal severity.

She is also the principal investigator of a NIH grant to study the prospective relationship between weight control behaviors and weight change among 15,000 multiethnic adolescents and young adults in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

About Alison Field
Alison Field received her ScD from Harvard School of Public Health. She was a research associate at the Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Publications
  • Field AE, Austin SB, Taylor CB, Malspeis S, Rosner B, Rockett HR, Gillman MW, Colditz GA. The relation between dieting and weight change among preadolescents and adolescents. Pediatrics 2003; 112: 900-906.

  • Field AE, Camargo CA, Taylor CB, Berkey CS, Roberts SB, Colditz GA. Peer, parent, and media influences on the development of weight concerns and frequent dieting among preadolescent and adolescent girls and boys. Pediatrics 2001; 107: 54-60.

  • Field AE, Camargo CA, Taylor CB, Berkey CS, Colditz GA. Relation of peer and media influences to the development of purging behaviors among preadolescent and adolescent girls. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine 1999; 153: 1184-1189.
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