Research > Janina R. Galler, M.D.
Janina R. Galler, M.D.
Principal Investigator
Dr. Galler is Senior Scientist at the Judge Baker Children’s Center and Director of the Barbados Nutrition Study. She was previously the Director of the Center for Behavioral Development and Mental Retardation and Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) at the Boston University School of Medicine, where she also served as Associate Chair of Child Psychiatry and Director of Residency Training in Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry.
Career Overview
Nearly half of the world’s children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition, and it is one of the leading causes of childhood morbidity and mortality even in developed countries, such as the US. Despite the global prevalence of childhood malnutrition, the current state of knowledge does not yet provide the basis for effective public policy recommendations. This is largely due to the lack of long-term, multigenerational studies of high-risk populations and the challenge in determining the independent effects of malnutrition, which occurs in the context of poverty, infection, crowding, limited medical care and poor sanitation. Dr. Galler’s long-term research studies were designed to address these issues, and to serve as the basis for developing interventions for high-risk undernourished children. As Director of the 40 year longitudinal Barbados Nutrition Study, Dr. Galler has been following children on the island of Barbados who suffered with malnutrition in their first year of life and who are now parents and grandparents. During their childhoods and adolescence, these children had dramatic increases in attention deficit disorder, which was closely linked to their performance on national examinations and behavioral outcomes. Dr. Galler currently has NIH funding to study the mental health outcomes of these individuals as adults. Dr. Galler has another 22 year longitudinal study in Barbados which has tracked the impact of postnatal maternal moods and breast-feeding on mental health and life outcomes. In parallel with these studies in human populations, Dr. Galler also directs a program of translational research in the laboratory on the effects of early malnutrition on brain and behavioral development. She is the principal investigator of an NIH-funded multidisciplinary research program using prenatally malnourished rats as an animal model of attention deficit disorder. Dr. Galler is the author of a book: Nutrition and Behavior and 142 published articles.
Awards
Dr. Galler was the first recipient of the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation Public Policy Leadership Award in Mental Retardation for her public-policy relevant research. She received the Blanche F. Ittleson Award of the American Psychiatric Association for her research contributing to addressing the mental health of children and families and the Irving Harris Lectureship Award of the Society for Behavioral Pediatrics. Dr. Galler was the recipient of the Centennial Award of Sophie H. Newcomb College, New Orleans, La. and is a former Medical Foundation Fellow.
Memberships and Committees
Dr. Galler is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. She served as a member of the National Advisory Child Health and Human Development Council, NIH, and the Advisory Committee to the Director of NIH. Dr. Galler has been a member of numerous NIH Review panels, including the Mental Retardation Research Committee and the Mental Retardation and Developmental Disability Research Centers Review Panel and has been a member of many advisory boards, including the International Maternal PKU Collaborative Study. Dr. Galler also served on the Scientific Advisory Committees of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation and the Thrasher Research Fund. She has been an advisor to the PAHO, UNICEF, UNDP and USAID.
Education and Training
Dr. Galler received her B.S. summa cum laude from the Sophie Newcomb College of Tulane University, New Orleans, LA. and her M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, N.Y. She completed her residency in psychiatry as one of the first women trainees at the Massachusetts General Hospital and trained as a Child Psychiatry Fellow at the Boston University School of Medicine. She completed her psychoanalytic training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Dr. Galler served in Washington, D.C. as a U.S. Senate Fellow with the Labor and Human Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Aging, Family and Human Services.