Alison Field, ScD

Department	Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine
Hospital Title	Associate in Medicine
Academic Title	Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Phone	617-355-3735
Fax	617-730-0004
Email	Alison Field
Location	300 Longwood Avenue AU-506 Boston MA 02115

Research Overview

Dr. Field's research focuses on the modifiable causes, correlates, consequences, and course of overweight, weight gain, unhealthy eating patterns, bulimic behaviors, and eating disorders among children, adolescents, and adult women.

She is a co-founder and former co-Director of the Growing Up Today Study, which was established in 1996 to assess the predictors of dietary intake, activity, and weight gain among children and adolescents during a four year period. Her research within the study is primarily related to the epidemiology of weight gain, obesity, weight concerns, bulimic behaviors and eating disorders. She has published extensively on risk factors for developing bulimic behaviors and obesity among the youth in the cohort. Currently she has one R01 from the NIMH to investigate how eating disorders should be best classified. As part of that project she is evaluating the current DSM-IV criteria and the proposed DSM-5 criteria, as well as empirically deriving a classification. All of these classifications are being evaluated among the 16,882 adolescents and young adults in GUTS. She found that bulimia nervosa (BN) affected approximately 1% of adolescent females; however, another 2-3% purge but do not binge eat (i.e., purging disorder, PD) and another 2-3% binge eat but do not purge (i.e., binge eating disorder, BED). Thus, the DSM-IV classification missed most eating disorders. PD is part of the large eating disorders not otherwise specified group in DSM-IV. The data suggests that PD is much more common than BN, but is similar to BN in terms of being associated with greater risk of starting to use drugs (odds ratio (OR)=1.7) and starting to binge drink frequently (OR=1.8).

In addition, she has a R01 from the NIDDK to continue following the 10,442 participants in the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS) II cohort to assess the independent and joint associations of intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (soda, sports drinks, energy drinks, and sweetened coffee drinks) and prepared foods with waist circumference, hypertension, BMI gain and the development of obesity. She is also mentoring a student investigating how non-hunger cues to eat, emotional and externally-induced eating, are related to weight status. She has found that emotional eating is strongly related to overweight, but externally induced eating is not. The role of non-hunger cues to eat is a growing area of interest to her. Not only will she be evaluating it in the GUTS II cohort as part of a R01, but also she is in the process of evaluating a smartphone app to track conscious and unconscious non-hunger cues to eat.  

About Alison Field

Alison Field received her ScD from Harvard School of Public Health. In addition to her appointment at Boston Children's Hospital, she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and an Associate Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Publications

• Sonneville KR, Calzo JP, Horton NJ, Haines, Austin SB, Field AE. Body satisfaction, weight gain and binge eating among overweight adolescent girls. Int J Obesity 2012; 36(7):944-9.

• Field, AE, Sonneville KR, Micali N, Crosby RD, Swanson SA, Laird NM, Treasure J, Solmi F, Horton NJ. Prospective association of common eating disorders and adverse outcomes. Pediatrics 2012; 130 e289-e295.

• Skinner HH, Haines J, Austin SB, Field AE. A prospective study of overeating, binge eating, and depressive symptoms among adolescent and young-adult women. J Adolesc Health 2012; 50: 478-483.

• Sonneville KR, Gordon CM, Kocher MS, Pierce LM, Ramappa A, Field AE.  Vitamin D, calcium, and dietary intakes and stress fractures among female adolescents. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2012 (166): 595-600.

• Field AE, Javaras KN, Aneja P, Kitos N, Camargo CA, Taylor CB, Laird NM. Family, peer, and media predictors of becoming eating disordered. Arch Pediatr Adol Med 2008; 162:574-79.

• Field AE, Austin SB, Striegel-Moore RH , Taylor CB, Camargo CA, Laird N, Colditz GA. Weight concerns and weight control behaviors of adolescents and their mothers. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2005; 159:1121-26.

• Field AE, Austin SB, Taylor CB, Malspeis S, Rosner B, Rockett HR, Gillman MW, Colditz GA. The relation between dieting and weight change among preadolescents and adolescents. Pediatrics 2003; 112: 900-906.