Associate Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences

Associate Professor of Epidemiology

Diana joined the School of Public Health in Fall 2019 as an Associate Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences. As a social epidemiologist, her research seeks to capture complex processes in the food, social and built environments to facilitate a better understanding of their influence on what has been coined the three pillars of health: diet, physical activity and sleep. She is particularly interested in vulnerable (e.g., low income) and racial/ethnic populations across various stages of human development.

Her work is grounded primarily in theoretical approaches from epidemiology (documenting determinants and distribution of risk in populations), nutrition (processes by which individuals obtain and utilize food) and geography (the role of place in shaping health risk). In addition to exploring non-communicable disease risk among vulnerable populations in the US, she is also exploring the impact of the nutrition transition on health status in Ecuador and Uganda. 

Selected Publications

Grigsby-Toussaint, D.S., Zenk, S.N., Odoms-Young, A., Ruggiero, L., Moise, I. (2010). Availability of commonly consumed and culturally-specific fruits and vegetables in African-American and Latino neighborhoods. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 110, 746-752.

Grigsby-Toussaint, D.S., Turi, K.N., Krupa, M., Williams, N.J., Pandi Perumal, S.R., Jean-Louis, G. (2015). Sleep insufficiency and the natural environment: Results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey. Preventive Medicine, 78, 78-84.

Grigsby-Toussaint, D. S., Jones, A., Kubo, J., & Bradford, N. (2015). Residential segregation and diabetes risk among Latinos. Ethnicity & Disease, 25(4), 451-458.

Antwan Jones & Diana S. Grigsby-Toussaint (2020) Housing stability and the residential context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cities & Health, DOI: 10.1080/23748834.2020.1785164

Scholarly Interests

Social and environmental determinants of health, Social epidemiology, Sleep, Obesity, Food environments and health, Green space and health

Affiliated Departments

School of Public Health