Preston Britner is a Professor of HDFS who has been on the faculty at UConn since 1997. “Brit” has been active in many service roles at department, college, university, state, and national professional organization levels throughout his time in Storrs.

Brit was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Northern Virginia. A first-generation college student, he completed his BA in psychology at the University of Miami, where he also captained the varsity track team, and his MA and PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Virginia, where he contributed to studies of child-parent attachment, child care, and child maltreatment prevention.

At UConn, Professor Britner has researched a number of topics (e.g., attachment-caregiving relationships; youth mentoring; prevention programs) with a focus on the application of child development and parent-child family relationship theory and research to applied settings (i.e., translational science), geared toward the promotion of healthy interactions and the prevention of negative behavioral outcomes. Much of his current research focuses on interventions for families with children in foster care. Brit is examining the effectiveness of college preparatory programs for high school youth in foster care, as well as looking at eventual college attainment for youth in care (and what factors influence those educational outcomes). Since 2001, he has been involved with the study and refinement of the Supportive Housing for Families (SHF) housing and child welfare intervention for families with children in, or at risk for, foster care. SHF is a national model of a community-based, family-focused intervention that was developed and studied collaboratively with state and nonprofit provider partners.

In addition to publishing two books and dozens of articles and chapters (most with student co-authors), Dr. Britner routinely testifies at state and federal hearings and briefings in Hartford and DC. He has served on numerous editorial advisory boards and was the Editor of the Journal of Prevention. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), Brit served as Co-Chair of the Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, leading APA’s policy efforts related to children and families. In Connecticut, he was Co-Chair of the Families with Service Needs Advisory Board at the legislature, working to improve supportive services for “status offender” children and their families.

At UConn, Professor Britner has chaired the Faculty Review Board, the Faculty Standards and Student Welfare committees of the University Senate, the Planning and Evaluation Committee for university accreditation, and the Teaching and Learning Advisory Board. Brit co-chaired the 2009 University Metanoia on “Preventing Violence against Women.” He was Co-Chair (2008-2012) of the Public Engagement Forum and the lead author of UConn’s successful 2010 Carnegie Foundation “Community Engagement” classification application. In the department, Professor Britner served as Associate Department Head (2006-2008) and Associate Department Head for Graduate Studies (2008-2010; 2019-2023).

Dr. Britner has been recognized as a University Teaching Fellow (2003) and with the AAUP Service Excellence Award (2011), the Philip E. Austin Endowed Chair (2013-2016; the first UConn HDFS faculty member to hold an endowed chair), the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Public Engagement (2015), and the 2019 Edward C. Marth Mentorship Award (outstanding mentoring of graduate students).

In 2023, he won the Distinguished Provost’s Outstanding Service Award for exemplary service and making an indelible impact to enhance the University’s mission. At the ceremony, the Provost shared the number and scope of Brit’s current service roles, prompting gasps from the audience and a re-thinking of when to say “no” from the award recipient.

Kim Gans and Beth Russell were featured in UConn Today for their participation in InCHIP’s Community Engagement Research Core’s networking event.

Rebecca Puhl gave the keynote address at the national American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. This conference brings together 3,000 surgeons, integrated health professionals, and industry leaders from over 40 countries. Her presentation, Confronting Weight Stigma: Understanding its Harms and Embracing Pathways for Change centered on the primary theme of this year’s ASMBS annual meeting, which is eliminating stigma and ensuring equitable, comprehensive care for all people living with obesity.

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.

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!