Associate Professor
Division of Nutritional Sciences
University of Illinois at urbana champaign
United States of America
He has done his Ph.D., 1998, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, M.P.P., 1985, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, B.A., 1983, Wheaton College, Illinois.
Economic evaluation of nutrition policies and programs; food security; economics of food safety; rural health; and health economics and consumer economics.Dr. McNamara is a health economist and consumer economist and his research addresses policy-relevant questions facing consumers and society. His research concentrates on health-related themes and it seeks to inform public debates and discussions surrounding nutrition and food policy issues. His food safety research (joint with Professor Gay Y. Miller and several co-authors) applies a general social welfare analysis framework to organize a set of sub-analyses concerning the gains to pork producers and the potential costs and health risks to consumers from the use of antibiotics in feeds at low levels of concentration (sub-therapeutic use) and to examine food safety issues in the pork system. Their model raises a number of potential policy approaches, which have not received much attention in the animal antibiotic use debate. Their analysis raises the possibility that, in addition to bans or restrictions on sub-therapeutic use in pork production, information-based strategies (such as education or certification for producers and veterinarians, or resistance monitoring) and incentive-based strategies (including targeted permits and taxes) also might lead to overall social welfare gains. Their farm-to-fork simulation model has yielded estimates of the risks posed by pork-borne salmonellosis and they have applied it to the evaluation of measures aimed at reducing food safety risks in pork (Miller et al. 2005, McNamara et al., forthcoming). In the area of food policies and dietary behaviors, Wilde et al. (AJAE 1999) investigated the impact of participation in the Food Stamp Program and the WIC program on the likelihood of a person's adherence to the dietary guidelines as expressed in the Food Guide Pyramid. Findings indicated that there were small positive impacts on dietary quality, particularly for the WIC program.