Walker S. Carlos Poston, Ph.D.
Physical Activity and Health: Differences in Developing and Developed Nations
Dr. Poston received his Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of California‑Santa Barbara. He completed the Clinical Psychology Residency at the USAF Medical Center Wright‑Patterson, Dayton, OH (APA-accredited) and a post-doctoral clinical fellowship in Clinical Health Psychology at Wilford Hall Medical Center, San Antonio TX. He also received a Masters in Public Health (M.P.H.), with an emphasis in community health and epidemiology from the University of Texas Houston Health Science Center in 1999. He currently is Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Informatic Medicine and Personalized Health, and Professor Basic Medical Science and Medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Medicine.
Dr. Poston is a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, the American Heart Association Council on Epidemiology and Prevention, and the North American Association for the Study of Obesity. He also is a Cardiovascular Health Fellow Alumni of the American Hospital Association’s Health Forum. He is an elected member of the American Society of Nutrition. He has received funding (serving as a principal investigator or co-investigator) from the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, the Department of Defense, and the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality and has published 129 peer‑reviewed journal articles and 33 book chapters, primarily in the areas of obesity epidemiology and intervention, cardiovascular outcomes, tobacco control, and minority health issues.
Dr. Poston also has presented at numerous national and international conferences and meetings on the etiology, assessment, and management of obesity and cardiovascular disease and tobacco control. Dr. Poston’s research focuses broadly on the epidemiology and treatment of obesity, cardiovascular disease and tobacco control. His published work in obesity and cardiovascular epidemiology has covered the broad spectrum determinants including genetics, personality and psychopathology, lifestyle and health behaviors, and social and environmental factors.
His experience in treatment outcomes includes published studies on lifestyle modification, pharmacotherapy, and community intervention studies. In addition, a number of Dr. Poston’s studies have focused on health outcomes and disparities among ethnic minority populations.