Advisor: Dr. Stefanos N. Kales | Program: EOME | Concentration: Environmental & Occupational Medicine and Epidemiology
– Q & A –
What is your background/experience prior to entering the program?
After obtaining my BS in human nutrition and dietetics, and MS in food science, nutrition, and metabolism, I completed my PhD in nutritional epidemiology at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. Prior to my postdoc, I completed a predoctoral research stay at HSPH working with the “Feeding America’s Bravest” trial, the first workplace randomized controlled trial with nutrition education, behavior change, and incentives strategies promoting the Mediterranean diet within United States firehouses and at home. I compiled the full data collection to create the final dataset and I published two cross-sectional analyses on metabolic syndrome and the lipid profile of this population at high risk of cardiovascular disease.
Why/how did you become interested in Occupational Health?
I became interested in occupational health as a nutritionist during my predoctoral research stay with Dr. Kales where I conducted data management and analyses with the “Feeding America’s Bravest” trial among US career firefighters that underwent a Mediterranean diet nutritional intervention.
What is your current involvement in Occupational Health?
I am currently working on the primary analysis for the “Feeding America’s Bravest” nutritional intervention. In addition, we are also developing the primary intervention tool for a new Mediterranean lifestyle trial for US career firefighters, a mobile app addressing four lifestyle domains: nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and resilience.
What are your future career plans/goals?
My future career goals in research pertain to the field of lifestyle medicine and nutritional epidemiology.
What are your current or past Pilot Projects?
I am currently contributing to the design and validation study for a newly developed lifestyle intervention app tailored toward the US firefighter workforce. This initial pilot study aims to validate the primary tool intended for a multicentered intervention study among a national population of US firefighters.