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Manu Khare, PhD, is a re research assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, with specific interests in obesity and chronic disease risk reduction in underserved populations and women’s health. Her research uses community-based behavioral lifestyle change interventions to motivate women by providing them with skills to increase physical activity and approved eating behaviors.

“There is a give and take between the two sides, and we are actively consciously trying to listen to what the community is saying.”

Martin MacDowell, DrPH, is a research professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford’s Department of Family and Community Medicine. In that role, he guides curriculum development evaluation and student education in the rural physician and pharmacy programs, and is also a faculty member in the public health program. His scholarly and consulting interests focus on program evaluation, health services research and population health epidemiologic research, and he has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and presented at many national meetings. Prior to working for the University of Illinois, Dr. MacDowell was a tenured faculty member in Xavier University’s graduate program in health services administration.

“You begin to get this culture of health going, where people think about the importance of their behavior in relation to what happens. For a long time in the U.S., we sort of left that to the medical community, and now, a lot of evidence shows that what you do yourself has a big impact on your health.”

Together, Dr. Khare and Dr. MacDowell created Win with Wellness, a multicomponent, collaborative, community-based initiative formed to address obesity and chronic disease risk in two rural Illinois counties.