Meet Our Team

Dr. Goran is program director for Nutrition and Obesity at The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and holds the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Endowed Chair in Childhood Obesity and Diabetes. He is a Professor of Pediatrics and Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Dr. Goran’s research has focused on the causes and consequences of childhood obesity over 30 years. His work strives to understand the biological factors linking obesity to increased disease risk during growth and development. Dr. Goran uses his research as a basis for developing new approaches for prevention, treatment and risk reduction.

He is also especially interested in ethnic disparities in obesity and obesity-related diseases. In particular, he focuses on how dietary sugar and sweeteners affect risk for obesity and related chronic diseases across the population, including Latinos. His research also covers maternal-infant nutrition and identifies ways to interrupt the programming of obesity during development. Dr. Goran has published over 400 professional peer-reviewed articles and reviews. He has received a number of scientific awards for his research and teaching.

He is the editor of Childhood Obesity: Causes, Consequences and Intervention Approaches (2017), co-editor of Dietary Sugars and Health (2014) and currently serves as editor-in-chief for Pediatric Obesity, a monthly research journal. In 2020, he published Sugarproof: The Hidden Dangers of Sugar That Are Putting Your Child’s Health at Risk and What You Can Do, published by Avery/Penguin in 2020.