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Comings & Goings
Wallace publishes new cookbook, ‘Sizzling Science’
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at: [email protected].
Congratulations to Taylor Wallace, Ph.D., on the publication of his cookbook, “Sizzling Science.” Wallace wrote this cookbook for fun and to honor his Mamawl, the name he called his grandmother who first got him excited about cooking. He often worked on the cookbook at Java House on 17th and Q Street. He would talk about some of the recipes and debated book titles with friends. I think he came up with the perfect title as he is all about science.
While I am not a chef, I am lucky to have friends who generously invite me to occasional home-cooked meals. Those who have already made some of the dishes using the recipes in this great new cookbook have said they are easy to make and delicious. I am waiting for a friend to bake and let me try the Kentucky State Fair “Grand Champion” Sour Cream Coffee Cake on page 23 that Taylor and Mamawl created. Hint, Hint Taylor! It won the blue ribbon each of the eight years they entered it into the fair and won the all-around Grand Champion for all foods entered in the Kentucky State Fair three times.
Wallace wanted people to be able to use his cookbook to prepare a full day’s meals. I kidded him suggesting maybe the breakfast section should have come last. Sizzling Science is separated into eight sections with the first being the science behind great-tasting dishes. Then breakfast, appetizers and nibbles, soups salads and stews, side dishes, main dishes, and desserts. Then to complete your meal and make sure your company goes home not only full and happy but totally relaxed there is the drinks and cocktails section. Now that the cookbook is finished I can’t imagine Wallace having much time to cook. As he will tell you his real world doesn’t leave much time for cooking.
Wallace is principal and CEO at the Think Healthy Group, Inc. and an adjunct professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at George Mason University. Prior to founding the Think Healthy Group, Inc., Taylor served as the senior director of science policy and government relations at the National Osteoporosis Foundation and the senior director of Scientific Programs at the National Bone Health Alliance. He has extensive experience and expertise in developing and implementing comprehensive and evidence-based legislation, policy, and regulatory programs in the fields of nutrition and food science. His academic research interests are in the area of nutritional interventions to promote health and prevent the onset of chronic disease.
Wallace earned his Ph.D. and an master’s in Food Science and Nutrition from Ohio State University and a bachelor’s in Food Science and Technology from the University of Kentucky. He currently manages and operates a large food and nutrition blog, DrTaylorWallace.com and is a co-host of the mainstream weekly radio show, Risky Behavior, where he provides science-based nutrition, food safety, and food technology information to the general public and consumer media.
Wallace is also a regular guest and contributor to the Dr. Oz Show, NBC4 Washington and has appeared on most major national news stations throughout the United States. He has served on the boards of the Institute of Food Technologists, Alliance for Food and Health, Feeding Tomorrow, Phi Tau Sigma, Capital Pride Alliance, and DC LGBTQ+ Community Research Advisory Board.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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