Assistant Professor
California State University, Chico
My research interests focus on improving the health and wellness of reproductive-aged women. My goal is to improve female and maternal health through evidence-based nutrition research. By utilizing quantitative and qualitative methods, I employ a formative approach to intervention development supported by identifying beliefs, behaviors, challenges, and needs of women and their families. As a trained public health physician with a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences, I’m able to identify gaps in clinical care where nutrition could be used as adjunctive therapy. Specifically for this study, my coauthors and I explore how nutritional guidance can be used to support fertility treatments for female cancer survivors with fertility challenges. The novelty of this project is that to date no nutrition intervention has been designed to support female cancer survivors going through fertility treatment, despite the overwhelming biochemical and epidemiologic evidence regarding the role of healthful nutrition in fertility and cancer survivorship. Thus, integrating our findings into practice will demonstrate the application of bench science and epidemiology in public health practice.