Professional Title:
Associate Professor of Cooperative Extension
Email:
Bio:
Dr. Diaz Rios is a community nutrition researcher and a registered dietitian who specializes in culturally and contextually responsive nutrition education to improve the food environment of families with young children. Her research is informed by the socioecological determinants of nutritional health to sensibly reach groups at risk of malnutrition. Drawing from participatory and implementation science principles, her most recent projects aim to increase nutrition education capacity in medically underserved communities by identifying feasible processes to bridge existing resources. This includes using tele-nutrition to deliver nutrition education in remote rural communities. Her instrumentation work consists of devising methodological approaches to adapt and validate evaluation tools for linguistic and cultural relevance. This work has resulted in several validated tools to measure the food environment at home, food-related parenting practices, and diet quality. This work contributes to documenting the impact of nutrition education programs implemented at the local, state, and national levels.
