Global Public Health Nutrition: Colón-Ramos Dietary Disparities Lab
Our Mission: To support underserved populations achieve their well-being via a better nutrition. We use participatory research approaches to identify and engage community partners. We aim to increase the impact of our research in informing policy, system, and environmental interventions to improve nutrition and diet-related cardiovascular risk factors.
Our Philosophy:
- Inclusion of diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives and approaches are critical to address the question of how to best support healthful nutrition behaviors in underserved populations. Our group actively seeks the inclusion of diversity in lived and learned experiences.
- A key element of our group that contributes to the continued commitment of community-academic partnership involves fostering positive, respectful relationships between community partner, participants of study, and individual members of the staff.
- Good, consistent, timely and engaging communication between all members of this group, and between this group and other partners, with emphasis on our community partners, is essential.
Our Core Values:
- Cultural Humility
- Curiosity to learn
- Resourcefulness and diligence in problem-solving
Brief Personal Research Statement: I am interested in interdisciplinary and community-engaged collaborations that contribute knowledge to reduce diet-related health disparities by changing the environments in which we live. To date, my research has contributed to: 1) produce knowledge of context-specific determinants of diet behaviors (especially in Latin America and the Caribbean--LAC); 2) develop, engineer, and evaluate public health nutrition intervention strategies as potential solutions to address dietary disparities; 3) understand the roles and interactions between diverse stakeholders and sectors to better inform policy that leads to nutrition equity.
Methodological portfolio includes: dietary and food environment assessments, assessment of nutritional status, mixed methods and community participatory research approaches, participatory intervention evaluation methods, systems and structural interventions to improve nutrition, and content expertise in nutritional sciences as well as public health nutrition (policy). I enjoy working with and engaging diverse stakeholders in understanding food systems and identifying potential intervention points to improve nutrition and reduce all forms of hunger and malnutrition.
Through my research, service, and teaching, I strive to create a learning environment that fosters problem solving and encourages collaborative learning.
