Foods and Dietary Supplements in the Prevention and Treatment of Disease in Older Adults

Ronald R. Watson, Ph.D., attended the University of Idaho but graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a degree in chemistry in 1966. He earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Michigan State University in 1971. His postdoctoral schooling in nutrition and microbiology was completed at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he gained 2 years of postdoctoral research experience in immunology and nutrition. From 1973 to 1974 Dr. Watson was assistant professor of immunology and performed research at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. He was assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the Indiana University Medical School from 1974 to 1978 and associate professor at Purdue University in the Department of Food and Nutrition from 1978 to 1982. In 1982 Dr. Watson joined the faculty at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center in the Department of Family and Community Medicine of the School of Medicine. He is currently professor of health promotion sciences in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman Arizona College of Public Health. Dr. Watson is a member of several national and international nutrition, immunology, cancer, and alcoholism research societies. Among his patents he has one on a dietary supplement; passion fruit peel extract with more pending. He continues to do research in animals and in clinical trials on dietary supplements and health including studies using omega-3 fatty acids in heart disease prevention and therapy. For 30 years he was funded by Wallace Research Foundation to study dietary supplements in health promotion. Dr. Watson has edited more than 110 books on nutrition, dietary supplements and over-the-counter agents, and drugs of abuse as scientific reference books. He has published more than 500 research and review articles.