Russell Pate

professor, University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health

Pate is an exercise physiologist with interests in physical activity and physical fitness in children and the health implications of physical activity. He has published more than 230 scholarly papers and has authored or edited three books. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Heart Association, and several private foundations and corporations. He heads a research team that currently is supported by three grants from the National Institutes of Health. He coordinated the effort that lead to the development of the recommendation on Physical Activity and Public Health of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Sports Medicine (1995). He served on the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (2003-04), the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee (2007-08), and an Institute of Medicine panel that developed guidelines on prevention of childhood obesity. He currently chairs the coordinating committee for the National Physical Activity Plan. Pate has served in several leadership positions with the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), and in 1993-94 served as that organization’s president. He is a past-president of the National Coalition on Promoting Physical Activity, and he is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education. In 1996 he received the Citation Award from the American College of Sports Medicine, and in 1999 he received the Alliance Scholar Award of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. A lifelong distance runner, Pate competed in three U.S. Olympic Trials marathons and twice placed among the top ten finishers in the Boston Marathon. For more than 20 years he served as president of the Carolina Marathon Association, which hosted the U.S. Olympic Trials: Women’s Marathon in both 1996 and 2000.