Current Work

Catalyzing Communities develops deep and meaningful relationships with community partners, using facilitation and evaluation techniques grounded in systems science to help them mobilize a core group of multisector leaders to improve the health of their community.

Through this project, ChildObesity180 has begun development of a sophisticated, responsive, and innovative technological platform that will give communities power to generate, integrate, analyze, share, interpret, and communicate their own data to drive lasting improvements in community health.

This study is evaluating physical activity programs in Boston public schools, advancing understanding of whether such programs reach children equitably as well as how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced programs’ reach, effectiveness, and implementation practices.

The FEED Study is a pilot study in partnership with Tufts Medical Center that aims to investigate the association between maternal feeding styles during infancy and infant adiposity.

ChildObesity180 is partnering with the Harlem Children’s Zone to replicate Healthy Ways, a program empowering youth, families, and the broader community to adopt lifelong, healthy habits.

i-DINE: Improving Digital Imaging for Nutrient Evaluation is a study to develop a novel method of dietary assessment, both easing the process and providing quick and accurate nutritional information.

The Kansas Food Policy Council Project is a state-wide evaluation of councils across Kansas. The main goals are to assess the effect that the provision of technical assistance by KC Healthy Kids has on councils and to assess the impact that council-led initiatives are having on community food systems in Kansas.

This study applies a healthy equity lens to determine whether complete streets policies lead to multiple levels of community change, including in the built environment, economic environment, social environment, and health.

This study aims to develop and evaluate, in collaboration with NY Road Runners, a physical literacy intervention reaching elementary-aged children at school and home. It includes qualitative research with parents to inform the design of the family intervention and evaluation of the multi-level (school + home) program.

This cooperative agreement with USDA aims to develop cutting-edge telehealth technology to improve delivery of nutrition education to pregnant women and caregivers of young children in the USDA’s WIC Program, particularly for clients who have difficulty accessing WIC clinics.

This cross-disciplinary initiative, co-led by Dr. Economos, is harnessing Tufts’ strengths in wide-ranging domains (e.g., nutrition, social sciences, medicine, data science, economics, and others) to define common aspirations and identify ways to create collaborative, high impact projects that help solve the global obesity crisis.

Building on a 1999-2008 longitudinal study that explored health behaviors and outcomes among more than 4,600 Tufts University students, this research is now engaging alumni to advance understanding of the relationships between health behaviors in the college years and outcomes in later adulthood.

You’re the Mom is a social media campaign that empowers moms to take small steps to make healthy eating fun and easy for their kids. Originally piloted as a consumer demand campaign in 2016, this new iteration expands the campaign’s original focus on quick serve restaurants to include foods purchased in stores and served at home.