Heewon Gray
Assistant Professor
Dr. Heewon Gray is an Assistant Professor in the College of Public Health at the University of South Florida. Her primary research focuses on obesity prevention among children and adolescents addressing dietary patterns as well as social and environmental determinants. Over the past 10 years, Dr. Gray has been involved in various nutrition interventions to reduce obesity prevalence in the U.S., which have been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the United States Department of Agriculture among other organizations. In the early stage of her research career, Dr. Gray has demonstrated that systematically evaluating implementation process is a critical component for interventions in real world settings, which is now considered as a common practice. Her systematic evaluation method helped not only understand what did or did not work well with intervention implementation, but also to determine how the implementation process influenced the study outcomes in several cluster randomized controlled trials. Dr. Gray uses structural equation modeling to advance intervention studies by determining significant theory-based psychosocial factors that have mediated behavioral outcomes. Recently, Dr. Gray has developed a research interest in nutrition and health in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), conducting mixed methods research to examine mealtime behavior problems and nutrient intakes among children with ASD. Dr. Gray has been awarded a seed grant from the USF Women's Health Collaborative to examine the feasibility and acceptability of an early childhood nutrition education intervention for children with ASD. She has authored more than 90 peer-reviewed journal articles and abstracts. She routinely presents her work at the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior, the American Society for Nutrition, and other professional conferences. Dr. Gray received her Ph.D. in Behavioral Nutrition from Columbia University.
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