Kenney Research Group
Our research focuses on identifying effective and feasible strategies to make eating healthfully easy, accessible, and affordable for everyone. Our team’s goal is to build evidence to support the development and implementation of effective population-level strategies that result in better nutrition for children and families
665 Huntington Avenue
Building 2, 3rd floor
Boston, MA 02115
Our Research Projects
Our research generates evidence to support the development and implementation of effective, equitable policies to support healthy eating.
Our team studies the impacts of changes to nutrition policies, like the standards governing WIC, school meals, SNAP, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. We use policy evaluation methods like natural experiments and interrupted time series analysis to study how policy changes impact diet quality, obesity risk, food purchases, and food insecurity. We also use qualitative methods to understand how the changes are experienced by program participants and to help understand reasons why policies may be more or less effective.
Changes to nutrition policies can’t have an impact if they aren’t successfully put into practice. Moreover, policy changes could even result in worsened health inequities related to income and race/ethnicity if the changes are unevenly implemented. We apply frameworks from implementation science to develop surveys and qualitative studies that investigate how different determinants influence whether nutrition policy changes are actually adopted, and whether there are effective implementation strategies that promote better and more equitable policy uptake.
Discrimination harms health in many ways. We study how socioeconomic disadvantage and structural racism limit the ability of children with low incomes and children of color to access the same healthy eating opportunities as other children. We particularly study the influence of targeted food and beverage marketing on nutrition disparities. And we explore the role of weight-related stigma as an overall harm to health and a barrier to nourishment and healthful eating.
Improving the implementation of existing policies and ensuring they are equitable is one thing, but we still also need new ideas and new strategies for how to support child nutrition on a population scale. We conduct social epidemiological investigations of food and nutrition behavior to understand social and behavioral determinants of eating, and also use a range of qualitative and quantitative methods to identify effective intervention strategies to help support environmental and behavioral change.
What we study:
- Impacts of federal nutrition programs (school meals, WIC, CACFP, and SNAP)
- Nutrition policy implementation
- Digital food and beverage marketing to youth
- Weight stigma
- Supporting healthier nutrition in child care settings
- Incorporating planetary health into child nutrition policies
Current Projects led by Erica Kenney
This study will explore the kinds of advertising that young children and their families see for sugary drinks and other beverages when they’re on mobile devices.
To learn more about the grant for this study, please visit here
If you are a study participant or interested in participating, please visit here
This small research project is to study the cost-effectiveness of interventions and programs that are commonly used in school settings but may lack evidence for impact. Our team is also conducting a qualitative study to understand how we might de-implement programs that are not cost-effective. To learn more, visit here
The mission of the Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is to work with community partners to develop, implement, evaluate, and disseminate cost-effective and evidence-based policies and programs that will improve population health by promoting healthy eating and active living and preventing chronic disease.
Since 1998, we’ve worked in partnership with schools, early care and education, out-of-school time, clinical, and other community partners to launch groundbreaking research to develop actionable, real-world solutions to promote nutrition and physical activity. We have developed, evaluated, and disseminated tools and trainings within our partner communities and states, as well as nationally and internationally. To learn more, visit here
Past Projects
- Examining State-Level Strategies to Implement Child Care Licensing Regulations on Healthy Eating, Physical Activity, and Screen time
- Urban School Food Infrastructure: Current Issues, Challenges, and Solutions
- Understanding the Impact of Changes to the Child and Adult Care Food Program on Food Expenditures, Food Quality, and Young Children’s Dietary Intake in Urban Family Child Care Homes. This project evaluated how changes to the CACFP meal pattern standards impacted children’s dietary quality in family child care homes
- Childhood Obesity Intervention Cost-Effectiveness Study (CHOICES): This project, led by Drs. Steven Gortmaker and Angie Cradock, used statistical modeling to evaluate the impact of a range of policies and programs to prevent childhood obesity on population health. CHOICES also partnered directly with state and local health departments to support evidence-based decision-making for public health planning. To learn more, visit here
- Early Nutrition: Researching the Implementation of CACFP Healthy Eating Standards (ENRICHES): This study developed and tested an implementation intervention strategy to support child care providers in adopting stronger CACFP (Child and Adult Care Food Program) nutrition standards, which, if effective and feasible, may be a promising approach to leveraging this policy to maximize public health impact. We collected novel, nuanced data on the interplay between home, neighborhood, and child care food environments and feeding strategies to understand how these may influence the strength of CACFP’s impact for young children, and worked to find strategies that can help child care providers implement feasible nutrition policies that promote health. To learn more about the grant for this study, please visit here
- Understanding the lost opportunity of the Child and Adult Care Food Program in improving child nutrition and reducing health inequities: This project, led by Dr. Tatiana Andreyeva at the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, investigated how to improve uptake of CACFP and maximize its impact. To learn more, visit here
- Understanding and reducing ‘churn’ among SNAP households with young children: This project, originally led by Dr. Sara Bleich, investigated whether there are socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in the risk of churning (i.e. temporarily losing benefits due to missed paperwork) in SNAP and evaluated different policy strategies for reducing churn. To learn more, visit here
- Feeding our children: comparing pandemic-EBT and Grab and Go School Meals during COVID-19: In partnership with Dr. James Krieger at the University of Washington, we explored the cost-effectiveness and reach of two critical programs that were introduced to prevent increases in child food insecurity during COVID-related school closures. To learn more, visit here