University of Hawaii Nutrition Scientist Receives American Dietetic Association Foundation’s Edna and Robert Langholz International Nutrition Award

FOR RELEASE AUGUST 16, 2006

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CHICAGO – Registered dietitian Jean H. Hankin, professor and researcher emerita in the epidemiology program at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii and professor of public health at the University of Hawaii, has been named the 2006 recipient of the American Dietetic Association Foundation’s prestigious Edna and Robert Langholz International Nutrition Award.

Hankin, a resident of Honolulu, will receive the award Saturday, September 16, during the Opening Session of the American Dietetic Association’s 2006 Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo, being held September 16-19 at the Hawaii Convention Center. This is the fifth time the award has been presented since its creation in 1992 by the late Edna Page Langholz, a registered dietitian and former ADA president, and her husband. The Langholz Award carries a $25,000 honorarium.

In a career that began as a supervising dietitian at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital in the 1940s, Hankin went on to become an international authority in quantifying the role of diet in chronic diseases. She helped create and pioneer the use of dietary assessment methods for discovering differences among populations, such as identifying effects of the “Westernization” of Asian diets on increased risk for heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis and stroke.

“Jean Hankin has made enormous contributions to developing methodology that is appropriate for diverse ethnic groups,” said registered dietitian Neva H. Cochran, chair of the American Dietetic Association Foundation. “She is revered by food and nutrition professionals, especially in Southeast Asia, Europe and Hawaii, for her work in making more precise assessments of a population’s nutritional status.”

Hankin’s methodology was first applied in studies of cancer among Caucasian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean and Hawaiian populations and was used in Fiji, the Cook Islands, Tahiti and New Caledonia to illustrate the role of diet in lung cancer. Hankin was primarily responsible in the 1980s for developing a dietary questionnaire that includes pictures of portion sizes, and an extensive food composition table to analyze the results. The questionnaire is being used to analyze the incidence of cancer among 215,000 men and women in Hawaii and Los Angeles.

Hankin retired in 1999, yet remains active as a researcher in studies of associations between diet and cancer. From 1996 to 2002, Hankin served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association and is an editorial board member of Topics in Clinical Nutrition. Hankin is a graduate of Milwaukee-Downer College. She earned a master’s degree from the University of Tennessee – Knoxville and a master’s degree in public health and doctorate in public health nutrition and epidemiology from the University of California – Berkeley.

With approximately 65,000 members, the American Dietetic Association is the nation’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals. The Chicago-based ADA serves the public by promoting optimal nutrition, health and well-being. To locate a registered dietitian in your area, visit the American Dietetic Association at www.eatright.org.


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