Faculty Profile
Karen E. Peterson, DSc
- Stanley M. Garn Collegiate Professor of Nutritional Sciences
- Professor of Global Public Health
- Professor of Environmental Health Sciences
Dr. Peterson is the Stanley M. Garn Professor and inaugural Chair of Nutritional Sciences
at the University of Michigan School of Public Health (U-M SPH) where she holds joint
appointments as Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Professor of Global
Public Health. Previously, she was Associate Professor of Nutrition and of Social
and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where she
directed the Program of Public Health Nutrition. Her research considers 1) the effects
of diet and toxicants (metals, endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on physical growth
and maturation and the development of cardiometabolic risk across the life course
via epigenetic mechanism and 2) the design and evaluation of health behavior interventions
to reduce obesity in multi-ethnic women and children. Dr. Peterson was Contact PI
for the NIEHS-funded U-M Children's Environmental Health and Disease Protection Center
from 2010-2019. Currently, she is Contact PI for “E3Gen: Multigenerational Influences
of Social Structure on Toxicant Exposures and Life Course Health in the ELEMENT Cohort”
following three generations of Mexico City women and their offspring in collaboration
with the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico.
Dr. Peterson also serves as Associate Director of the NIDDK-funded Michigan Nutrition
and Obesity Research Center and directs the MNORC Nutrition Assessment Lab. She has
substantial expertise in the validation of self-report instruments to assess dietary
intake of foods nutrients across different lifecycle periods, relative to unbiased
nutrient biomarkers, e.g. metabolomics and other criterion measures. She is the founding
Director of the University of Michigan Momentum Center (momentumcenter.org: Driving Discovery to End Child Obesity), designed to foster transdisciplinary innovation in research among faculty and clinicians
in ten units campus wide.
- DSc Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health
- RDN, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
- BA Foods and Nutrition, University of Utah
English L, Hao W, Meeker JD, Jansen EC, Watkins DJ, Goodrich JM, Torres-Olascoaga L, Aljahdali A, Baylin A, Cruz-Tolentino M, Tellez-Rojo MM, Peterson KE. (2026). Associations between repeated measures of exposure to phthalates, phenols, parabens, and their mixtures and Metabolic Syndrome in midlife women in Mexico City. Environ Res, In Press.
Bou Ghanem J, Kofas M, Peterson KE, Cantoral A, Aljahdali A, Torres L, Tellez-Rojo MM, Jansen EC. (2025) Sleep duration modifies the association of alternate Mediterranean Diet Score with metabolic syndrome in midlife women in Mexico. J Nutr 155(11): 3967-3973.
Banker M, Jansen EC, Goodrich JM, English L, Dolinoy DC, Song PXK, Mitchell JA, Tellez-Rojo MM, Cantoral A, Peterson KE. (2024) Associations between sleep and physical activity behavior clusters and epigenetic age acceleration in Mexican adolescents. Med Sci Sports Exerc 56(11): 2173-2183.
Halabicky OM, Tellez-Rojo MM, Goodrich JM, Dolinoy DC, Mercado-Garcia A, Hu H, Peterson KE. (2024) Prenatal and childhood lead exposure is prospectively associated with biological markers of aging in adolescence. Sci Total Environ.913:169757.
Casey JL, Meijer JL, IglayReger HB, Ball S C Han-Markey TL, Braun TM, Burant CF, Peterson, K. (8) (2023). Comparing self-reported dietary intake to provided diet during a randomized controlled feeding intervention: A pilot study. Dietetics 2(4), 334-343.
Aljahdali AA, Peterson KE, Cantoral A., Ruiz-Narvaez E, Tellez-Rojo MM, Kim HM, Hebert JR, Wirth MD, Torres-Olascoaga LA, Shivappa N, Baylin, A. (2022). Diet quality scores and cardiometabolic risk factors in Mexican children and adolescents: A longitudinal analysis. Nutrients, 14(4).
Rodriguez-Carmona Y, Meijer JL, Zhou Y, Jansen EC, Perng W, Banker M, Song PXK, Tellez-Rojo MM, Cantoral A, Peterson, KE. (2022). Metabolomics reveals sex-specific pathways associated with changes in adiposity and muscle mass in a cohort of Mexican adolescents. Pediatric Obesity, 17(6), e12887.
LaBarre JL, Peterson KE, Kachman MT, Perng W, Tang L, Hao W, Zhou L, Karnovsky A,
Cantoral A, Tellez-Rojo MM, Song PXK, Burant CF. (2020) Mitochondrial nutrient utilization underlying the association between metabolites
and insulin resistance in adolescents. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 105(7): 2442-2455.
Wu Y, Sanchez B, Goodrich JM, Dolinoy D, Cantoral A, Mercado-Garcia A, Ruiz-Narváez
EA, Téllez-Rojo MM, Peterson KE (2019). Dietary exposures, epigenetics and pubertal
tempo. Environmental Epigenetics, 5(1).
Email: karenep@umich.edu
Fax: 734-936-7283
Phone: 734-647-1923
Address: 1867 SPH I, 1415 Washington Heights
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2029
For media inquiries: sph.media@umich.edu
Areas of Expertise: Nutrition