On July 26, Nathan Berg, Ph.D., will present “Unlocking the Urban Food Chain: Food Access, Food Deserts, and Community Health” at the Library’s Summer Showcase Health Policy Forum. Jay Horton, M.D., Director, UT Southwestern Task Force on Obesity Research, will host the forum.
The forum will be begin at 12 noon in the McDermott Lecture Hall (Room D1.700), and it is open to everyone. A light lunch will be served so please come early! Pre-registration to attend the forum is not required. For more information, contact John Fullinwider by phone at 214.648.3801 or by email.
Dr. Berg’s groundbreaking study – “Access to Grocery Stores in Dallas”, which was conducted with James Murdoch – provides the first mapping of food access in the city’s various communities (International Journal of Behavioural and Healthcare Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2008).
The term “food deserts” describes communities that lack grocery stores but often abound in fast-food restaurants and convenience stores that sell unhealthy, processed foods and offer few healthy options. Food deserts are the result of a convergence of social, economic, and public policy factors, including the flight of supermarkets to the suburbs, inadequate public transportation, and the lack of healthy foods at corner stores. Texas has one of the largest “grocery gaps” in the nation, with the fewest number of supermarkets per capita of any state.
Dr. Berg is associate professor of economics in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). Since joining UTD in 2001, he has published numerous articles and chapters in the field of behavioral economics in such journals as the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Psychological Review, Social Choice and Welfare, and Contemporary Economic Policy. Dr. Berg was a Fulbright Scholar in 2003 and a Visiting Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute-Berlin in 2005. His research has been cited in Business Week, The Village Voice, The Advocate, Atlantic Monthly, and Canada’s National Post.
Dr. Berg teaches microeconomics, psychology and economics, financial markets, econometrics, and mathematical economics. His research focuses on behavioral economics, judgment and decision making, economic demography, and urban economics. This work has attracted repeated coverage, with mentions in national print media and television appearances, including MSNBC, Fox News, Science News, and the Financial Times. Since 2006, he has served as an elected board member of the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics.
Dr. Horton is professor of internal medicine and molecular genetics and the Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Chair in Obesity and Diabetes Research at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He obtained his bachelor’s and medical degrees from the University of Iowa and completed his internal medicine residency, gastroenterology fellowship, and Howard Hughes post-doctoral fellowship at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Horton is a former PEW scholar and member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and Association of American Physicians. He serves as a consulting editor for The Journal of Clinical Investigation and associate editor of The Journal of Lipid Research.