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Chairman
International Obesity Task Force
Professor W. Philip James is chairman of the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), working with WHO, the Commonwealth Secretariat and other organizations to develop strategies for the prevention and management of obesity and its associated diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers. He also chaired and wrote the UN commission's report on global issues in nutrition.
In 1996 he established the IOTF, which was responsible for drafting the first WHO Technical Report (2000) on the prevention and management of obesity. This led to the first USA national approach to the assessment and management of obesity which he supported at its Washington launch.
Professor James chaired a conjoint Department of Health/NGO report for the Minister of Public Health which set out how to tackle the escalating problem of obesity in school children. He is currently acting as an adviser to the Parliamentary Select Health Committee for its enquiry into escalating obesity rates in the UK.
Professor James qualified in physiology at University College, London in 1959 and then studied medicine at University College Hospital, graduating in 1962. After various internships and residency posts in London he went to work at the UK's MRC Unit in Tropical Metabolism in Jamaica where he began his nutritional research in gastrointestinal aspects of malnutrition, culminating in an M.D. in 1968 and followed by a year at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, USA.