Rebecca Seguin-Fowler
Rebecca Seguin-Fowler, PhD, RDN, LD, CSCS, is Associate Director for the Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture at Texas A&M University. As a public health scientist with expertise in community-based nutrition and physical activity intervention research, she provides leadership for the organization’s social and behavioral intervention research initiatives via the Healthy Living program. Dr. Seguin-Fowler is an Elected Member of the National Academy of Medicine, professor in the Department of Nutrition in the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, graduate faculty in the Department of Health Promotion and Community Health Sciences at the School of Public Health, and serves as a Committee Member for the Food and Nutrition Board, within the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Improving community health for underserved and underrepresented populations has been at the core of her work for more than two decades. She has led widely disseminated dietary and physical activity interventions, innovative food systems intervention projects, and a variety of adapted evidence-based programs for at-risk populations. Her current research focuses on understanding how people’s social, food and physical activity environments influence behavior change and maintenance—particularly in at-risk populations and settings, such as low-income families and rural communities.
Her programs have reached nearly every state in the U.S., as well as several other countries, helping hundreds of thousands of individuals improve their health and providing critical skill-building and support to a vast range of health educators working to serve their local communities.
She has secured more than $18M million in competitive funding to support her research with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and others. She has received numerous awards throughout her career including the American Public Health Association Award for Excellence, the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy Alumni Excellence in Nutrition Award, the Excellence in Practice-Research Award from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American Public Health Association’s Henrik L. Blum Award for Excellence in Health Planning, the Kenneth E. Freedland Founder’s Award from the Society of Behavioral Medicine, the Mead Johnson Award from the American Society for Nutrition, the and a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. She has published more than 155 peer-reviewed articles and is frequently asked to speak to national and international audiences about her scientific findings as well as her community-engagement research and multisector partnerships.
A registered dietician, she received her bachelor’s degree in clinical exercise physiology from Boston University and a master’s degree in nutrition communication and a doctorate in food policy and applied nutrition from Tufts University in Boston.