Kim Gans grew up near Philadelphia in Havertown, Pennsylvania. She went to Duke University as a first-generation college student and earned a BS in Biology. She took all the pre-med courses, but switched her interests after taking a course on food and hunger. She completed a Master’s degree in Public Health, with an emphasis in Nutrition at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. For her field experience, she worked at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston with their cardiovascular disease prevention program. During that time, she learned about the Pawtucket Heart Health Program in Rhode Island, one of three NIH-funded community-based heart disease prevention projects in the US, and moved to RI to work for this program in 1986. As part of that job, she developed, implemented, and evaluated heart disease prevention interventions in worksites, schools, restaurants, grocery stores, churches, and with health care providers. While working, she went back to school at the University of Rhode Island to get her Ph.D. in Nutrition. Upon graduation, she became an Assistant Professor (Research) in Community Health at Brown University, which later became the Brown School of Public Health. Kim was on the Brown faculty from 1992-2014 and also served as Deputy Director and later Director of the Brown Institute for Community Health Promotion. In 2014, she joined the UConn HDFS faculty.
Kim is a nutritionist and behavioral health researcher with almost 40 years of experience in intervention development and evaluation research in community-based settings to improve eating habits, prevent/control obesity, and/or increase physical activity. Her work spans the lifespan from young children to older adults with a focus on low-income and ethnic minority populations. She has been PI or Co-PI of 29 externally funded grants (including 9 NIH R01s and 2 R18s) and Co-I on 28 externally funded grants. Her funding has come from NHLBI, NCI, NICHD, NINR, NIMHD, NIDDK, CDC, USDA, Administration on Aging, multiple foundations, and state agencies. She has published 138 peer-reviewed articles and several book chapters. She has also developed numerous educational materials, programs, and dietary assessment tools for the public and providers, including Rate Your Plate and REAP (Rapid Eating and Activity Assessment for Providers), which are widely used nationally.
Much of Kim’s research includes multi-level, community-engaged approaches to improve diet and/or physical activity through changing home, work, school, childcare, and neighborhood nutrition and physical activity environments in conjunction with behavioral interventions. Her research has also focused on applications of innovative health technology, particularly computerized tailoring using print, video, web and/or texting. She also engages in translational research to study dissemination/implementation of effective interventions to various community and clinical settings. Kim is an avid collaborator who enjoys creating multidisciplinary research teams, and a passionate mentor – serving as primary mentor for junior faculty on 6 K grants, 6 diversity supplements, and co-mentor on many more. She has won awards for her mentoring as well as her research.
Kim’s current federal grants support intervention research to improve Southeast Asian children’s diets, to work with family child care providers and/or families to improve the dietary behaviors of preschool children, to understand the impact of enhancements to Meals on Wheels home-delivered meal services on older adults’ health and well-being, and to test the feasibility of incorporating digital obesity prevention modules into the Parents as Teachers home visitation program for families with infants.
Kim currently serves in several leadership roles at InCHIP and has held leadership positions with the American Public Health Association, American Heart Association, International Society for Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, Association of Schools of Public Health and Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research and Evaluation Network. Locally, she has served on committees for the RI Multiple Sclerosis Society, RI Food Policy Council, and RI Hunger Elimination Task Force. She also served as Director of Community Engagement for the Brown School of Public Health from 2020-2022.
Outside of work, Kim enjoys traveling, reading books (she has been in the same book club since 1986), genealogy research, wine-tasting, daily New York Times word puzzles and crosswords, going to the beach, weight training, boxing, and walking her standard poodle Basil.
Dr. Georgia Powell earned her Bachelor of Science in HDFS with a minor in Gerontology from UConn in 2000. Since then, she has dedicated her career to improving health outcomes and advancing mental wellness across vulnerable populations. With over 25 years of experience, she has held leadership roles in the healthcare and insurance industries. Her work has focused on clinical operations, public health education, research, and program implementation, especially in underserved communities.
Congratulations to Alaina Brenick, who was selected to be the 25-26AY UConn Hartford Faculty Leadership Fellow as part of the UConn Hartford Teaching and Learning Equity Faculty Leadership Fellow Program!
Marlene Schwartz featured in UConn Today discussing what cuts to school lunch and food bank programing means for children and families: 
Congratulations to Beth Russell, recipient of this year’s InCHIP Community-Engaged Health Research Excellence Award. This award recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in health-related research conducted in collaboration with one or more community organizations and consistent with the mission of InCHIP.
Congratulations to Na Zhang, recipient of this year’s InCHIP’s Junior Faculty Research Excellence Award! This award recognizes a pre-tenure InCHIP-affiliated faculty member who has made significant scientific contributions in a health-related domain consistent with the mission of InCHIP.
I entered UConn in Fall 1975 majoring in Home Economics Education. During my time at UConn not only did I get an excellent education, but I also met my husband. I loved my coursework, especially the classes in the Child Development and Family Relations (CDFR) department, which eventually become HDFS. When it came time for student teaching I knew without a doubt I had made the right decision. My job search took me right back to where I started, and I was hired as a Home Economics teacher at my alma mater, Platt High School, in Meriden CT. I earned my Masters Degree from UConn a few years later. In 2005 I had the opportunity to become part of the early piloting of HDFS 190 (which later became HDFS 1070) as part of the Early College Experience program. This experience changed the whole direction of my career in a very positive, fulfilling way. In 2008 I was in the “right place at the right time” and was offered the chance by Kathy Brophy to teach a summer session of the course at the Waterbury campus. This first opportunity grew into teaching the course during fall and spring semesters, not only in Waterbury, but also Torrington and Hartford. I taught evening and late afternoon classes for the next ten years, traveling to different campuses after a full day at Platt. My hope was that the adjunct position would continue after I retired.