Perrin is a nationally-recognized leader in patient-oriented primary care, childhood obesity, and health disparities research. Perrin has developed, tested, and disseminated many tools to help pediatricians prevent and treat obesity. Perrin’s research focuses on what pediatricians can do during well-child checks to support parents in helping children grow up healthy, and her groundbreaking work has had a broad impact on an epidemic that affects one in three children in the United States.

Perrin has spanned qualitative and quantitative methods and topics—from inflammatory markers in neonates to developing and testing color-coded growth charts to the influence of messages in children’s movies—to understand the many facets of childhood obesity and health correlates, particularly focusing on disadvantaged communities. Perrin founded the Duke Center for Childhood Obesity Research and, with colleagues, created, led, and researched “Greenlight,” a low-literacy primary care program to prevent obesity in young children, starting at infancy and focusing on dietary, physical activity, and screen time advice. Now, Perrin and colleagues are expanding on this work by conducting a comparative effectiveness trial that innovates with asynchronous care elements like text messaging goals.

Perrin joined Johns Hopkins University as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in 2021 from Duke University.