CEW+Inspire Workshop Series: Understanding Nutrition and Community Health – A Journey from Service to Research to Advocacy
CEW+, 330 E. Liberty Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Presenter: Cindy Leung, ScD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Michigan School of Public Health
During this workshop, attendees will follow Dr. Cindy Leung’s trajectory in public health. Exploring her early work in local food banks with food-insecure populations and her scientific research on the effectiveness of our federal food programs, attendees will then discuss her present-day qualitative research to better understand the lived experiences of food-insecure individuals. Participants will learn about populations affected by food insecurity, including low-income families and college students. To wrap up the session, attendees will learn how all of this information is being used to design programs and affect future policies to benefit food-insecure populations. A hands-on wellness activity will be presented by the CEW+ Inspire team to complement this workshop.
The discussion will be followed by a networking reception.
Free and open to the public.
Dr. Cindy Leung is a nutrition epidemiologist whose research focuses on diet and health disparities in vulnerable population. A primary focus of Dr. Leung’s research is on how the experience of food insecurity affects the health and well-being of diverse populations. She is currently leading qualitative and quantitative studies that examine the impact of food insecurity among children, parents, and college students, with the goal of raising awareness about the extent of food insecurity in different communities and informing the development of interventions to address food insecurity and its correlates. Dr. Leung holds an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley, and a ScD in nutrition and epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prior to her graduate training, she coordinated food distribution programs and taught community nutrition education at a large food bank in Oakland, California.
The CEW+Inspire initiative is a multifaceted program that aims to expand the vision of what is possible and teach lifelong skills to underserved students, empowering each to make bold and confident choices about their futures.
Through programming offered under the CEW+Inspire initiative, U-M students, staff, and faculty converge to build coping and resilience skills through mindfulness, the celebration of diverse scholarship, and recognizing the value underserved students bring to the university community.
Honoring the diverse scholarship of faculty members serves an integral role in this program as it both recognizes their unique contributions, while serving as inspiration to students and offering real-life representations of authentic journeys to success.