Dr. Ritchie is the Director of the Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) which is located in the University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources; she is also a CE Specialist. She received her doctorate and masters degrees in nutrition at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also a Registered Dietitian.
She has devoted her career to share, synthesize, develop and collaborate on research to inform, build and strengthen nutrition policy and systems. The goal of her work is the prevention of food insecurity, obesity and diabetes, and the promotion of health and wellness. She was the lead author of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics first Position Paper on Pediatric Weight Management published in 2006 and co-author of the 2013 update to this paper. She also co-authored a comprehensive book: Obesity: Dietary and Developmental Influences. She has presented dozens of papers at national scientific and professional meetings and has testified in Sacramento and Washington, DC on policy-relevant research findings. Recently she served on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Evaluating Progress of Obesity Prevention Efforts, which published Evaluating Obesity Prevention Efforts: A Plan for Measuring Progress. Her current research interests involve evaluation of the relationship of programs and policies, in particular the federal nutrition assistance programs, with children’s dietary intakes and weight status in school, childcare and other community settings.