Jennifer Black

New York University, PhD

Columbia University, MSc

Registered Dietician, R.D.

University of Toronto, BSc (Hon.)

My research focuses broadly on the social determinants of health and dietary choices. I am interested in how attitudes and behaviours related to eating, cooking, food selection, body image and body weight status are shaped by socio-cultural and neighbourhood-level factors. My research is shaped by my background as a registered dietitian and fuses methods and theory from nutrition education, public health, sociology and geography.

Projects

Some of my recent and forthcoming research projects include:

• Working with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society to examine the impact of a community food hub program on food bank members’ nutritional status and experiences of food insecurity
• Examining the connections between the food environment inside and surrounding Vancouver schools with students’ dietary practices, knowledge, skills and self-efficacy related to food, nutrition and food policy.
• Assessing the relations between neighbourhood-level socioeconomic status, demographic factors, land use and access to food in British Columbia.
• Examining trends and the social determinants of dietary choices, obesity and body image using national health surveys such as the Canadian Community Health Survey version 2.2.
• Mapping food access and opportunities and barriers to physical activity in New York City.

• LFS 150 Scholarly Writing and Argumentation in Land and Food Systems
• FNH 398 Research Methods in Human Nutrition
• LFS 350 Land, Food, and Community II
• FNH Graduate Seminar

For a full list of publications, see Google Scholar.

Black J.L., Velazquez C.E., Ahmadi N., Chapman G. E., Carten S., Edward J., Shulhan S., Stephens T., Rojas A. 2015. Sustainability and public health nutrition at school: assessing the integration of healthy and environmentally sustainable food initiatives in Vancouver schools . Public Health Nutr. 18(13):2379-91.

Black J.L. 2014. “A Look to the North: Examining Food Environments in Canada” In: L ocal Food Environments: Food Access in America . Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.

Black, J.L. and Veenstra, G. 2011. “A cross-cultural quantitative approach to intersectionality and health: Using intersections between gender, race, class and neighbourhood to predict self-rated health in Toronto and New York City”. In: Health Inequities in Canada: Intersectional Frameworks and Practices . Vancouver: UBC Press; p. 71-91.

Black, J.L., Carpiano, R.M., Fleming, S., Lauster, N. 2011. “Exploring the distribution of food stores in British Columbia: Associations with neighbourhood socio-demographic factors and urban form.” Health Place. 17(4):961-970.

Black, J.L. and Macinko, J. 2010. “The Changing Distribution and Determinants of Obesity in the Neighborhoods of New York City, 2003-2007.” American Journal of Epidemiology 171(7):765-775.