Suzanna Martinez
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
More than 30% of U.S. college students, and over 40% of California college students, do not reliably have enough to eat.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
food insecurity
college students
emerging adulthood
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Test whether more chronic food insecurity, measured monthly for a year, predicts poorer cardiovascular and metabolic health over two years in a random cohort of 563 UC Santa Cruz students.
- Determine whether health behaviors such as diet, physical activity, sleep and nicotine exposure explain the link between chronic food insecurity and poorer blood pressure, blood glucose, blood lipids and body mass index in college students.
- Examine whether family obligation and parental and social support change how socioeconomic status relates to food insecurity, and whether stress links food insecurity to students' heart and metabolic measures.
More about the research
Today's students are often from low-income backgrounds, financially independent, or the first in their families to attend college. These traits raise the risk of food insecurity, and Black and Latino students are hit harder. Heart disease is already the fifth leading cause of death among people aged 12 to 24. That makes emerging adulthood (ages 18–26) a key window for shaping lifelong heart and metabolic health. Food insecurity is linked to poor diet, poor sleep and other risk factors. Still, little is known about how ongoing food insecurity affects students' cardiovascular and metabolic health (CVMH) over time, or how to measure that health objectively.
Why it matters
Food insecurity is common among college students and can be changed through policy. If chronic food insecurity is shown to harm students' heart and metabolic health, the findings could support new or existing campus and government food-assistance policies. These policies may lower future cardiovascular risk for young adults, especially low-income, first-generation, Black and Latino students.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jiwoo Lee
University of Minnesota, MN·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Describe the sites and participating families of the USDA Summer Food Service Program in the Twin Cities to evaluate how the program is currently delivered, using surveys of children and parents recruited at program sites.
Benjamin Chaffee
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Examine how socioeconomic stressors in early adulthood affect oral health over time in a cohort of 4,000 diverse first-year college students, and whether effects differ by race/ethnicity and gender.
Tanja Kral
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether a heightened drive to eat (food reward value, rapid eating and eating without hunger) predicts 1-year changes in weight and body fat in children ages 5 to 7 independently of a genetic risk score or in addition to it.
The school
University of California-San Francisco: 89 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 164 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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