Addressing society's most pressing food issues for human and planetary health.
The Food and Health Lab at Montana State University engages with communities to explore linkages between food environments, nutrition, and health. Our team conducts basic and applied research to address society’s most pressing food security issues in ways that are culturally relevant and equitable while maintaining environmental wellbeing. The ultimate translational goal of our efforts at the Food and Health Lab is to co-produce and disseminate evidence-based strategies in the food system that foster human and planetary health.
The Food and Health Lab at Montana State University takes an interdisciplinary, collaborative, and community-engaged approach in examining linkages between food environments, nutrition, and health. Our research projects actively involve community members, undergraduate and graduate students, and collaborators from a range of disciplines. We seek ongoing guidance with a cross-exchange of knowledge and perspectives from various stakeholder groups including farmers, practitioners, scholars, enterprises, institutions, and policy makers. Integrating an evidence-based approach with participatory research methods, we collaborate with stakeholder groups to co-produce solutions to food system challenges.
Our education efforts focus on training a professional workforce equipped to examine and address food system challenges. We teach a range of undergraduate and graduate courses on food system topics and provide mentorship through the Sustainable Food Systems Graduate Program, Sustainable Food and Bioenergy Systems Undergraduate Program, Food and Nutrition Undergraduate Program, and Dietetic Systems Leadership at Montana State University. Central attributes of our Sustainable Food Systems education efforts include: (1) systems thinking, (2) multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinarity, (3) experiential learning and, (4) collective action and service-learning projects. Please email us to learn more about the Sustainable Food Systems Graduate and Undergraduate programs at MSU.
Dr. Selena Ahmed, Associate Professor of Sustainable Food Systems
selena.ahmed@montana.edu
Dr. Carmen Byker Shanks, Associate Professor of Food and Nutrition and Sustainable Food Systems
cbykershanks@montana.edu
The Food and Health Lab at Montana State University is a research facility of the Montana IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence.
Learn more out about our team, research projects, outreach and educational resources, funding, and publications on food systems.
Research reported on this website was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P20GM103474. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
