Healthy Diets,
Healthy Environments,
Healthy People
My work aims to identify and inform systems, policy, and environmental approaches to obesity prevention, with a focus on children and families. My current and future work examines the following: 1) meaningful differences in how children and parents respond to obesity prevention interventions; 2) individual, social, and contextual factors that modify individual and family responses to obesity prevention interventions; 3) and ways to leverage existing environmental changes (i.e. increases in healthier restaurant menu offerings) to promote family health and reduce obesity risk. To address these areas of inquiry, I combine my experience in answering research questions using a variety of methods, including secondary data analysis, community interventions, agent based modeling, and experimental trials; identifying novel datasets to ask big picture questions of public health importance; maintaining research partnerships; and in applying behavior change theory to research questions.