Roger Figueroa, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.Sc.

I’m going to halve my publication output. You should consider slow science, too If we don’t slow down, the research enterprise is going to crash, argues Adrian Barnett.

Great piece on prioritizing quality over quantity in scientific publication.

For those of us with labs, this necessarily involves shrinking our group size. After I got tenure I started to downsize my lab and have not regretted it one iota. More time for each student & more time to think & write.

What a throw!

Nutrition colleagues who are teaching and feel like they just lost a bunch of material (DGAs, MyPlate) - this is a great opportunity to teach critical thinking, spot what's changed and critically evaluate the why.

A young girl places a watermelon in a small orange shopping cart while shopping for produce at the grocery store. The text reads: “New policy brief! WIC serves more than 6.7 million low-income people in the U.S. each year. Longer participation in WIC contributes to higher diet quality among infants and young children. By aligning WIC food packages with the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans, policymakers can maximize the availability of healthy foods for disadvantaged children.” The Nutrition Policy Institute, University of California logo is included.

🥣📈 Longer #WIC participation = healthier diets! A new policy brief finds kids ages 2–5 who stay on WIC longer have higher diet quality and eat more nutrient-dense, WIC-approved foods. Supporting continued enrollment could help reduce nutrition disparities.

In this new op-ed from @thehill.com, Pasquale Rummo (@nyu.edu) and Jesse Strunk Elkins (UNC Charlotte) show how cuts to SNAP will leave people overworked and underfed, especially veterans, unhoused people, manual laborers, and others.

Read the full piece: thehill.com/opinion/heal...

The role of food-related strategies and social support: A qualitative study on the lived experiences with food among income-eligible food assistance beneficiaries This qualitative study examined the lived experiences of food among food assistance beneficiaries in New York, United States to conceptualize potentia…

Results from this study offer an additional lens to complement existing and on-going nutrition security research. Thankful to participants in this study for their valuable time and for sharing their experiences with our team.

🔗: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

One of the main findings highlight how participants use a combination of food-related strategies that vary across food work stages (from food planning to eating), which are dynamically influenced by social and material capital, food environments, and life history.

Great start to the calendar year. Thrilled to share a recent publication in #Appetite led by Dr. Reah Chiong.

In this qualitative study, we interviewed income-eligible food assistance beneficiaries in New York to better understand their lived experiences with food.

This thread perfectly explains why AI has little value for qualitative research.

Yes, large language models can find patterns in qualitative data. But, they're trained on what we already know. So, they won't find anything surprising. And, surprise is qualitative research's primary value-add.

"social science has to answer questions that people beyond academia care about..academia can['t] just be self-referential as it grows infinitely. I think there are challenges to understand what’s going on in the United States and the world and to talk about it to broad audiences in plain language.."

Protect Academic Freedom, Our Faculty, Our Communities Faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members: The UNC System is preparing to cave to political pressure from the Heritage Foundation, the Oversight Project, and the James Martin Center by ...

Circulating a petition against a proposal to force UNC system faculty to share their syllabi publicly, a move that would potentially exposing faculty to bad faith actors without necessarily improving student access to syllabi (which are already accessible in the course catalog) #AcademicFreedom

Interventions to enable or improve evidence-informed decision-making in public health and preventive medicine: A scoping review Public health and preventive medicine (PHPM) is the branch of medicine that plans, implements, and evaluates population-level health interventions (1,2). Historically, PHPM was primarily concerned wit...

Interventions to enable or improve evidence-informed decision-making in public health and preventive medicine: A scoping review

Emily Groot, Jessica Pelley, Anne-Marie Boylan, David Nunan

www.ajpmfocus.org/article/S277...

The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands The short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” tells the story of what goes when aid goes.

As 2025 comes to an end, let us not forget the devastating loss of USAID & its impact for those who suffer from food insecurity and hunger. This New Yorker documentary reminds us about the loss and devastating consequences of rash decision-making. Powerful and tragic but a must watch. bit.ly/4aLjjYP

Trump Keeps Insisting There's No Affordability Crisis Despite Data Showing Otherwise Americans are watching the prices of groceries, utilities, medical care and housing skyrocket—but Trump says it’s not happening.

Americans are watching the prices of groceries, utilities, medical care and housing skyrocket—but Trump says it’s not happening.

and/including much better resource allocation for prevention efforts…

What direction will we take the future of our field of public health?

We are at a crossroads

Dr. Mary Bassett represents the best of us, and I hope will continue to be supported in leading the way forward

Heartened to see much support for her on this petition

docs.google.com/document/d/e...

Trump's crackdown on immigration is taking a toll on child care workers President Donald Trump’s push for the largest mass deportation in history has had an outsized impact on the child care field, which is heavily reliant on immigrants and already strained by a worker sh...

"Immigrant childcare workers & preschool teachers, the majority of whom work & live in the US legally, say they are wracked by anxiety over possible encounters w ICE. Some left the field, others have been forced out by changes to immigration policy."
apnews.com/article/immi...

I’m so excited to read this paper! In PIBBS no less. ;-)

Academic article: How People Make Meaning in a Fragmented Democracy: Implications for Incorporating Public Opinion into Public Policy

1/4. The U.S. continues to be a place where people’s life experiences and outcomes differ dramatically by social positioning. How does that affect the way people make meaning of what is happening around them? Those questions guided this new paper. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Barriers and Enablers to WIC Participation: Review of Evidence From Studies Published Between 2019 and 2024 The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) supports low-income mothers and children aged <5 years in the U.S. w…

WIC continues to play an important role in national food security and disease prevention efforts. Our study provides a roadmap of multilevel factors influencing WIC participation as well as highlighting gaps to be addressed in future research and practice. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

WIC is arguably one of the earliest forms of Food Is Medicine in the U.S., providing nutritious food for pregnant/postpartum women and children (ages 0-5 years) as well as health assessments and nutrition education in a healthcare setting.

Barriers and Enablers to WIC Participation: Review of Evidence From Studies Published Between 2019 and 2024 The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) supports low-income mothers and children aged <5 years in the U.S. with nutrition and healthcare resources; however, n...

After 5+ years of hard work, I am excited to share our new open-access publication in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine Focus synthesizing recent evidence on barriers and facilitators to participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Woman, Infants, and Children (WIC).

The agriculture secretary says SNAP changes are coming. Here's what we know Brooke Rollins has made a case for sweeping changes to food aid programs by claiming USDA has uncovered "massive fraud." But she and USDA haven't provided the underlying data or any evidence.

Brooke Rollins has made a case for sweeping changes to food aid programs by claiming USDA has uncovered "massive fraud." But she and USDA haven't provided the underlying data or any evidence.

Number of SNAP recipients Amazon 2,456 Walmart 2,318 Uber 1,799 DoorDash 1,462 Tempus Unlimited 1,425 Stop & Shop 989 Mass General Brigham 956 Dollar Tree 952 Albertsons Companies, Inc. 896 Bayada Home Health 887

The Boston Globe identified the companies in Massachusetts that employ the most SNAP recipients. A key stat: "In Massachusetts, 74% of working-age recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are employed, half of them full-time."

Full article: www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/28/m...

Here’s how hunger and food insecurity affect individuals – and whole societies : Short Wave One in every eight households in the U.S. isn’t always sure where the next meal will come from. Limited food access can spell hunger – and that can affect the body and mind. So can cheaper, less nutri...

I was featured in this recent podcast episode of @npr.org Short Wave on how hunger and food insecurity affect individuals and whole societies.

www.npr.org/2025/11/24/n...

Weekend food for thought: The USDA’s unrelenting opposition to SNAP

The USDA is engaged in a concerted effort to reduce enrollment in SNAP, even though people who qualify are entitled to benefits. Assigning food stamps (SNAP) to the USDA was a mistake from the get go, but once SNAP was part of the…

Food banks, already strained, brace for prolonged demand Even as SNAP benefits are restored, food banks and pantries around the nation continue to feel the strain with no reprieve in sight.

Even as SNAP benefits are restored, food banks and pantries around the nation continue to feel the strain with no reprieve in sight. n.pr/4oOIUEl

Poverty is a policy choice. Concentrated wealth is a policy choice. Inequality is a policy choice. None of it is natural or inevitable. Remember: We have the power to build a system that serves the many, not the powerful few.

Impacts of Immigration Policies on Families US immigration policies have profound impacts on immigrant families. In a robust field of study across disciplines, scholars have documented how the multi-layered, complex immigration regime opens and...

This open-access article by @abregoleisy.bsky.social and Lucia León is an incredibly useful overview of how immigration policies shape families' lives. Great reference for scholars, students, policymakers, journalists – everyone, really.

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Want to make your science heard beyond academia? Join us Nov 19 for the SBM webinar: “Science in Plain Language: Writing, Speaking, and Engaging Beyond Academia.”
✅ Learn how to simplify your findings
✅ Pitch op-eds that matter
✅ Engage the public & policy audiences

🔗 www.sbm.org/training...