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Uriyoán Colón-Ramos

Associate Professor

ScD, MPA

Additional info:

Uriyoán Colón-Ramos is a public health nutrition scientist with expertise in the use of community-participatory mixed methods approaches.  She directs the Diet Disparities Co-Lab, where she studies what people eat, why they make those choices, and how policies and programs can best facilitate health-promoting diet behaviors. Colón-Ramos has worked extensively across the Americas to examine how policies and nutritional guidance align with the lived experience of the communities that she works with. 

Before joining WashU, Colón-Ramos was an associate professor with the Milken Institute School of Public Health and an affiliated faculty member of the Global Food Institute at George Washington University. Her research program has been supported by private foundations and federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Her research is often published in nutrition-related journals including the Journal of Nutrition, the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the Nutrition Journal, Public Health Nutrition, and International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. As a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project, she has been cited by the public media and her opinions distributed to a readership of more than 30,000. 

The name Uriyoán (pronounced ‘Oodi-Joanne’) derives from the now nearly-disappeared American Indian Taino tribes in the Caribbean.

Areas of focus:

  • Food and water systems
  • Food security
  • Community-engaged mixed methods approaches
  • Diet-related chronic diseases
  • Nutrition during emergencies in the U.S.

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