Professor Marlene Schwartz featured in CT By the Numbers in an article, American Heart Association First-Ever Statement on Children’s Healthy Eating Supports UConn Center Research. Read the article here.

Professor Rebecca Puhl was featured in an article, The Fitness Industry is a Farce, in Medium. Read the article here.

Vida Samuel, Assistant Professor in Residence, was featured on the HealIN podcast: About race: A conversation between friends.

Professor Rebecca Puhl was interviewed and quoted in the July feature article of Scientific American: “Treating Patients Without the Scale” (see page 28). Read the article here.

The CT Voice featured Assistant Professor Ryan Watson and his program of research, including quotes from some of his colleagues (go to p. 60).

Associate Professor Linda Halgunseth quoted in the NY Times describing parenting during the pandemic.

Professor Keith Bellizzi featured in The Conversation discussing the role of resilience in coping with COVID-19 cases surge. Read the article here.

Congratulations to Professor Kim Gans, recipient of the InCHIP Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award!

HDFS Faculty Service Award goes to Professor Marlene Schwartz. Marlene has demonstrated excellence in both service and leadership at UConn, throughout Connecticut and at the national level. Most notable at UConn is her leadership at The Rudd Center, but she has also been involved in many committees in the department and around the university. More broadly, her service and leadership roles have aimed to identify and implement strategies to improve nutrition and provide healthy food to food-insecure children in the United States, with a specific focus on Connecticut. She has worked tirelessly with the charitable food system and school settings as part of these efforts, and has worked extremely closely with food banks and food pantries in Connecticut.  Her frequent presence on advisory committees at all levels of government shows that she is the “go to” person for environmentally-oriented policy expertise related to childhood nutrition and obesity prevention.

The HDFS Faculty Research Award goes to Professor Rebecca Puhl. Rebecca has dedicated her career to research in the field of obesity and weight stigma with the ultimate aim of improving the lives of children and adults affected by obesity by coordinating research, education, and policy efforts aimed at reducing weight based bullying, stigma, and discrimination. She has 127 peer reviewed articles in top-notch academic journals and her work has been cited over 21,000. She is truly a pioneer in the obesity field and is the leading national expert in weight stigma research. Without Rebecca’s significant contributions, the field of research surrounding weight stigma and its impact of the lives of children and adults with obesity would likely not exist.