Linda S. Adair, PhD

Professor of Nutrition, Department of Nutrition and Fellow, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Linda Adair
  1. United States

Biography

Linda Adair is a Professor in the Department of Nutrition at the Gillings School of Global Public Health and School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, and Honorary Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She earned her PhD in Biological Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and completed a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship for Studies at the Interface of Biology and Demography at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Her research focuses on maternal and child nutrition, in particular, the determinants and consequences of infant and early childhood feeding and growth patterns, and the developmental origins of adult health. She has led the Cebu (Philippines) Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey for more than 30 years, and has been a collaborator on research in China, South Africa, Rwanda, and Malawi. As one of the founding members of the COHORTS collaboration, she has published numerous studies based on birth cohorts in low and middle-income countries. Her US work is with the Coordinating Center for the Environmental Influences on Child health (ECHO) which focuses on child obesity, airways, neurodevelopment and positive health. Her methodological focus is on the design and implementation of population-based health/demographic/nutrition surveys and the application of longitudinal epidemiologic and structural models to health outcome research. At the University of North Carolina, she teaches courses in international nutrition as well and analytic methods in nutrition epidemiology. Adair is the 2014 recipient of the Kellogg International Nutrition Award, and was recently inducted into the American Society for Nutrition Society of Fellows. She has more than 300 peer-reviewed publications in biomedical journals.

Recent Publications

  1. Adair LS, Fall CH, Osmond C, Stein AD, Martorell R, Ramirez-Zea M, Sachdev HS, *Dahly DL, Bas I, Norris SA, Micklesfield L, Hallal P, Victora CG; COHORTS group. Associations of linear growth and relative weight gain during early life with adult health and human capital in countries of low and middle income: findings from five birth cohort studies. Lancet 2013;382(9891):525-34. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)60103-8.

  2. Adair L, Borja JB, Carba D. Stunting, IQ, and Final School Attainment in the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey Birth Cohort. Economics and Human Biology 2021, Apr 7;42:100999. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2021.100999.

  3. Victora CG, Adair L, Fall C, Hallal PC, Martorell  R, Richter L, et al. Maternal and child undernutrition: consequences for adult health and human capital. Lancet 2008;371(9609):340-57. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61692-4.

  4. *Slining MM, *Kuzawa CW, Mayer-Davis EJ, Adair LS. Evaluating the indirect effect of infant weight velocity on insulin resistance in young adulthood: A birth cohort study from the Philippines. American Journal of Epidemiology 2011;173(6):640-8. DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwq435.

  5. Gordon-Larsen P, Koehler E, Howard AG, Paynter L, *Thompson AL, Adair LS, Mayer-Davis EJ, Zhang B, Popkin BM, Herring AH. Eighteen year weight trajectories and metabolic markers of diabetes in modernising China. Diabetologia. 2014;57(9):1820-9. DOI: 10.1007/s00125-014-3284-y.

  6. Bollen KA, Noble MD, Adair LS. Are gestational age, birth weight, and birth length indicators of favorable fetal growth conditions? A structural equation analysis of Filipino infants. Statistics in Medicine. 2013;32(17):2950-61.

  7. Victora CG, Hartwig FP, Vidaletti LP, Martorell R, Osmond C, Richter LM, Stein AD, Barros AJD, Adair LS, Barros FC, Bhargava SK, Horta BL, Kroker-Lobos MF, Lee NR, Menezes AMB, Murray J, Norris SA, Sachdev HS, Stein A, *Varghese JS, Bhutta ZA, Black RE. Effects of early-life poverty on health and human capital in children and adolescents: analyses of national surveys and birth cohort studies in LMICs. Lancet. 2022;399(10336):1741-52. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(21)02716-1.

  8. Adair LS, Martorell R, Stein AD, Hallal PC, Sachdev HS, Prabhakaran D, Wills AK, Norris SA, Dahly DL, Lee NR, Victora CG. Size at birth, weight gain in infancy and childhood, and adult blood pressure in 5 low- and middle-income-country cohorts: when does weight gain matter? Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 May;89(5):1383-92. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.2008.27139.

  9. Kuzawa CW, Hallal PC, Adair L, Bhargava SK, Fall CH, Lee N, Norris SA, Osmond C, Ramirez-Zea M, Sachdev HS, Stein AD, Victora CG; COHORTS Group. Birthweight, postnatal weight gain, and adult body composition in five low and middle ncome countries. Am J Hum Biol. 2012 Jan-Feb;24(1):5-13. doi:10.1002/ajhb.21227.

  10. *Lane CE, *Bobrow EA, Ndatimana D, Ndayisaba GF, Adair LS. Determinants of growth in HIV-exposed and - uninfected infants in the Kabeho Study. Matern Child Nutr 2019: e12776. doi: 0.1111/mcn.12776.

Research Expertise

  • Infant and early childhood nutrition and growth

  • Developmental origins of adult health and wellbeing

  • Long term cohort studies in low and middle income settings

  • Longitudinal and structural modeling of growth