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Zoobia W. Chaudhry M.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her areas of expertise include obesity and preventive medicine. Dr. Chaudhry is board-certified in Internal Medicine and a diplomat of the American Board of Obesity Medicine. She received her medical degree from Allama Iqbal Medical College. After completing residency training at University of Iowa – Des Moines, she joined the general internal medicine faculty at Johns Hopkins. From a research perspective, Dr. Chaudhry published several peer-reviewed articles in the field of obesity, diabetes and preventive care. Her areas of expertise include medical management of obesity the treatment of obesity-related diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes. She also understands the holistic nature of losing weight and works with colleagues who are experts in nutrition and behavioral therapy. She believes in providing patients with knowledge and offering them the most up-to-date therapeutic options.

Dr. Hussein Elbadawi is an endocrinologist in the department of internal medicine in the School of Medicine at Wayne State University. Dr. Elbadawi completed an internal medicine residency at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington Massachusetts followed by a combined clinical and translational fellowship at Wayne State University in Endocrinology, Diabetes & metabolism. He then joined the faculty as the assistant program director of the endocrinology fellowship program. He is board certified in internal medicine and Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. He is also a diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine as well as a certified clinical densitometrist.

He is a clinical assistant professor of medicine and very involved in medical education. He is very passionate about educating the next generation of health care providers about obesity and related metabolic diseases. He has been instrumental in modifying the medical school curriculum to include obesity as a topic introduced early in physiology and pathophysiology courses. He started the Obesity & lipids clinic in the division of endocrinology to train interested residents and fellows to serve a unique underserved obese patient population.

He is affiliated with the Detroit Medical Center, the Children’s Hospital of Michigan and Karmanos Cancer Institute where he was recognized as an obesity medicine specialist in addition to his role as an endocrinologist.

Dr. Elbadawi’s research activity revolves around brown adipose tissue and its response to hormones and catecholamines. He is a member of the Obesity Society, The Endocrine Society, The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and The American Thyroid Association. He actively participates in local and institutional programs aiming at raising awareness of local community members to envision obesity as a disease.

Dr. Marcus “Chris” Griffith is a general adult, child and adolescent psychiatrist and previously owned and operated several successful medical practices in Henry County, Georgia for twenty years. He is currently employed by The Southeastern Permanente Medical Group in Atlanta, Georgia and is a Clinical Assistant Professor at both Morehouse and Emory University Schools of Medicine. He is actively involved with Kaiser Permanente of Georgia’s Bariatric and Obesity Care Teams, Highly Reliable Training, Co-lead for the Behavioral Health UBT and Quality Review Management services.

Dr. Griffith has given over 1000 lectures on the local, state, and national levels. He has delivered presentations for The National Football League, Turner Broadcasting Corporation, Georgia Institute of Technology, National Medical Association, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, and multiple academic institutions. Additionally he has provided expert opinion to The Food and Drug Administration, the United States House of Representatives, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Griffith was previously a department chair at Southern Regional Medical Center and has served on the advisory boards for several local and national organizations.

He has been the recipient of The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award presented by the City of Seaside and the California State Legislature (2011 & 2013); The E.Y. Williams Distinguished Scholar Award by The National Medical Association, and The Pinnacle Award from Live Healthy & Thrive Youth. In 2013 he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Georgia State Medical Association and The Southeast Permanente Medical Group Community Service Award. Additionally, he and his wife, Dr. Jeana Griffith, have recently completed a book. Titled The Tale of Two Athletes-The Story of Jumper and The Thumper, it is a true, inspirational story based upon a lifelong friendship that was turned into a children’s book to combat the obesity epidemic.

In her current general endocrinology practice, she cares for patients with diabetes, obesity, metabolic bone and calcium disorders, hypogonadism, thyroid, pituitary and adrenal disorders. Prior to her current professional role, she enjoyed working with and teaching endocrinology fellows while on faculty at the University of Pittsburgh and VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System.

Dr. Hawkins completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia and received her medical degree from Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.  She completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Kim completed his internship and residency in medicine at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, IL and was selected as Chief Resident at University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, IL. He completed his fellowship training in clinical nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center and additional fellowship training in nutrition and obesity at Boston Medical Center (BMC) in Boston, MA. Dr. Kim is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine in the Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition.

His current responsibilities include clinical care and teaching in the Nutrition and Weight Management Center at BMC. As a full-time member and attending physician in the BMC clinical nutrition program, Dr. Kim is a part of a multidisciplinary team whose task is to diagnose and treat malnourished and morbidly obese patients with multiple co-morbidities. He leads the Nutrition Support Service team and manages the consults for patients with severe malnutrition, multiple nutritional deficiencies and feeding difficulties. In the Nutrition and Weight Management Center, Dr. Kim evaluates and treats patients with obesity, including management of patients before and after bariatric surgery.

Dr. Christopher Ko is a board certified internist and obesity medicine specialist. He completed his medical training at Northwestern University and his residency in internal medicine at Emory University. He practices at Bluepoint Medical associates, a multi specialty bariatric center located in Northern Virginia.

Shanu N. Kothari MD, FACS earned his BA from Anderson University and his MD from the University of Illinois College of Medicine-Peoria. He completed his general surgery residency at Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation (La Crosse, Wisconsin) and his fellowship in Minimally Invasive Surgery at Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, Virginia). He is currently the MIS/Bariatric fellowship director at Gundersen Health System which he established in 2003, Dr. Kothari has been a member of the program committee for the ASMBS for the past seven years, and was chair of the video/poster session 2011 to present. He is the chair of the ASMBS Clinical Issues Committee, member of the ASMBS Rural Subcommittee, ASMBS Task Force on Integrating Emerging Technology & Procedures into Clinical Practice, and ASMBS Revision Statement Task Force.

Dr. Kothari has over 65 publications in peer-reviewed journals, 3 book chapters and served as the senior editor of the December 2011 issue of Surgical Clinics of North America dedicated to Metabolic and Bariatric surgery. Dr. Kothari is an Associate Editor of the recently released textbook Evidence-Based Approach to Minimally Invasive Surgery, Dr. Kothari serves as an ad hoc reviewer for nine surgical journals and was recently appointed to the editorial board of Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases

Dr Liang completed her Internal Medicine residency and Gastroenterology fellowship at McGill University.  She went on to do research fellowships in Hepatology at the University of Zurich and in Nutrition at the University of Toronto. She has a busy clinical gastroenterology and obesity medicine practice and is an active staff physician at North York General Hospital in Toronto. She is also a lecturer at the University of Toronto and is a diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Dr. Holly Lofton started her personal journey of weight loss as a pre-teen when she modified her lifestyle to improve her diet and became more active in sports. She continued to pursue her interest in weight management in her college years at Boston University when she trained as an aerobics instructor. Even during her regimented medical school years at the Medical College of Georgia, she enlisted patients and fellow classmates to lead more active lifestyles and to use nutrition to improve their overall health.

Dr. Lofton continued to investigate the importance of weight loss in prevention and treatment of medical conditions as she completed her Internal Medicine residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She was then hand selected from a pool of many physicians to train at Geisinger Medical Center’s fellowship in Nutrition and Obesity Medicine in Pennsylvania.

It was during that time that Dr. Lofton honed her skills at using evidence based medicine to treat overweight and obesity as well as utilizing nutrition as a component of caring for the whole patient. After completing the fellowship, she scored in the top ten highest amongst physicians who passed the Board Examination for the American Board of Obesity Medicine, and went on to serve as a staff physician and fellowship director at Geisinger.

In recent years, she has served on the bariatric medicine committee for the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery as well as on the Advisory Board and Board of Directors for the Obesity Action Coalition, all while training other physicians to become skilled in weight management and nutrition. She also educated the general public about the importance of maintaining a normal weight through lectures, workshops, and a national radio segment.
Dr. Lofton was welcomed into the NYU Langone Weight Management Program in early 2012. In her practice, she combines scientifically proven weight loss techniques with medications and behavior modification to find each patient’s niche. She is currently involved in developing research investigating changes in metabolic rates during and after weight loss.

Dr. Mattar is Medical Director at Swedish Medical Center and a Diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine. Formerly, he was Professor of Surgery at Oregon Health & Science University. He is also Immediate Past-President of the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgeons and the Vice-President of the Fellowship Council. He has been actively serving on ASMBS committees since 2003. His practice is entirely bariatric in nature and his main clinical interests are in the area of standardizing pathways and optimizing patient outcomes. He has published numerous articles and book chapters in the field and he enjoys teaching and advocating for his patients.

Dr. Meidl was born in Manitowoc Wisconsin.  He attended Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH for undergraduate education receiving a B.A. in Biology in 1987.  He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA in 1991 and then did his Internal Medicine internship and second year of residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.  He completed his third year of internal medicine residency at Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, PA in 1994. He was chief resident in internal medicine at Geisinger Medical Center 1994-1995.  He practiced one year of internal medicine at the Geisinger Clinic in Muncy, PA, then joined the Hannibal Clinic and moved to Hannibal, MO in 1996 where he still practices internal medicine.  Dr. Meidl started practicing obesity medicine in a dedicated Healthy Weight and Wellness Clinic at the Hannibal Clinic in 2017.  He received his SCOPE (Specialist Certification of Obesity Professional Education) from the World Obesity Federation in 2017.  He achieved board certification from the American Board of Obesity Medicine in 2018.  Dr. Meidl is married and has four children.

Dr. Kim T. Nguyen completed her undergraduate training at Harvard College and received her M.D. from Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. During medical school, she pursued clinical research as a Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco. After completing her residency training in internal medicine at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, Dr. Nguyen obtained her clinical fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at Columbia University/New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

While at Columbia, Dr. Nguyen was supported by the mentorship of Dr. Judith Korner, M.D., Ph.D. and Dr. Sharon Wardlaw, M.D., and received an Endocrine Fellows Foundation grant for her research focusing on changes in gut hormone secretion and insulin sensitivity and secretion after bariatric surgery. She also further developed her clinical expertise and interest in obesity medicine through working with Dr. Korner at the Columbia University Weight Control Center. Dr. Nguyen has published in Diabetes and Current Diabetes Report.

Dr. Nguyen currently practices as a general endocrinologist with The Permanente Medical Group, a large multispecialty group that provides care for more than 3.8 million Kaiser Permanente members in Northern California. She is interested in improving the long-term management of bariatric patients and expanding the medical weight loss program.

Dr. Nguyen is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, and Obesity Medicine. She is a member of the Endocrine Society, American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, American Diabetes Association, and the American College of Physicians.

Dr. Reid is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University in the Division of Endocrinology. She completed her medical training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, followed by an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center-Albert Einstein College of Medicine. After her residency, she spent a year as a Research Fellow and then completed her fellowship training in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, both at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University.

Dr. Reid is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology. During her fellowship, her research focused on acromegaly. She received an Endocrine Fellows Foundation Award as well as an NIH supplemental grant to investigate the endothelial function of patients with acromegaly. Her current research focuses on obesity and changes in hormones and medical co-morbidities in patients undergoing bariatric surgery. She currently treats patients at the Columbia University Weight Control Center.