Athens, Ga. – James H. Rimmer, an expert in developing health programs to reduce obesity in people with disabilities, will give the 2013 Ramsey Lecture on Feb. 13 at the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education.
Rimmer, the first Lakeshore Foundation Endowed Chair in Health Promotion and Rehabilitation Sciences and professor in the School of Health Professions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, will speak on “Building a Research Agenda in Obesity, Physical Activity and Disability” at 4 p.m. in Mahler Auditorium.
Rimmer serves as director of the UAB/Lakeshore Research Collaborative and is currently involved in a longitudinal study examining the health trajectories of people with disabilities.
He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on topics related to physical activity, health promotion, secondary conditions and disability. He is director of two federally funded centers: the National Center on Physical Activity and Disability and the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Interactive Exercise Technologies and Exercise Physiology for People with Disabilities.
Before arriving at UAB in 2012, Rimmer led the development of interdisciplinary research programs in disability and health promotion for 15 years at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
In 2008, he was appointed to the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was one of 13 members selected to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Physical Activity Scientific Advisory Committee, and he serves on the advisory board at the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research at the National Institutes of Health. Since 1997, Rimmer has been awarded more than $25 million in federal funding.
The event is funded by the Ramsey Lecture Series in the UGA College of Education’s department of kinesiology and is offered this year in collaboration with the UGA Obesity Initiative.