Olives and Olive Oil in Health and Disease Prevention

of the founding members of this school serving the mountain west of the USA. He is a professor of Family and Community Medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of Arizona. He began his research in public health at the Harvard School of Public Health as a fellow in 1971 doing field work on vaccines in Saudi Arabia. He has done clinical studies in Colombia, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and USA which provides a broad international view of public health. He has served in the military reserve hospital for 17 years with extensive training in medical responses to disasters as the chief biochemistry officer of a general hospital, retiring at a Lt. Colonel. He published 450 papers, and presently directs or has directed several NIH funded biomedical grants relating to alcohol and disease particularly immune function and cardiovascular effects including studying complementary and alternative medicines. Professor Ronald Ross Watson was Director of a National Institutes of Health funded Alcohol Research Center for 5 years. The main goal of the Center was to understand the role of ethanol-induced immunosuppression on immune function and disease resistance in animals. He is an internationally recognized alcohol-researcher, nutritionist and immunologist. He also initiated and directed other NIH-associated work at The University of Arizona, College of Medicine. Dr. Watson has funding from companies and non-profit foundations to study bioactive foods' components in health promotion. Professor Watson attended the University of Idaho, but graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a degree in Chemistry in 1966. He completed his Ph.D. degree in 1971 in Biochemistry from Michigan State University. His postdoctoral schooling was completed at the Harvard School of Public Health in Nutrition and Microbiology, including a two-year postdoctoral research experience in immunology. Professor Watson is a distinguished member of several national and international nutrition, immunology, and cancer societies. Overall his career has involved studying many foods for their uses in health promotion. He has edited 120 biomedical reference books, particularly in health and 450 papers and chapters. His teaching and research in foods, nutrition and bacterial disease also prepare him to edit this book. He has 4 edited works on nutrition in aging. He has extensive experience working with natural products, alcohol, exercise, functional foods and dietary extracts for health benefits and safety issues, including getting 12 patents. Dr. Watson has done laboratory studies in mice on immune functions that decline with aging and the role of supplements in delaying this process as modified by alcohol and drugs of abuse.