While growing up in North Carolina, Stephanie Mazzucca-Ragan imagined herself as a teacher one day. But along her academic journey, she realized that limited access to nutritional food cheated many children of what they needed to thrive in school and in life. Good nutrition, she learned, was the foundation for healthy brains, bodies and futures.
So rather than positioned at the front of an elementary school classroom, she is hard at work shaping even earlier moments of young people’s lives, developing and evaluating evidence-based approaches for promoting healthy eating and physical activity. Her goal is not only to improve children’s ability to learn and grow, but to prevent chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer as they age.
“When I made my way to public health and landed in nutrition and physical activity, I came to it with a prevention mindset,” Mazzucca-Ragan said. “If the world is structured so that people can choose to be active and eat more healthfully, that will prevent all the chronic diseases associated with it. When I think about prevention, you get the biggest bang for your buck if you’re starting at the earliest age. Developmentally, it has always made sense to focus on early childhood because it’s such a critical window when our habits and preferences are being formed.”
An assistant professor at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Public Health and a member of the university’s Prevention Research Center, Mazzuca-Ragan focuses on improving home environments, and organizations such as public health departments and child care centers, to support healthy behaviors for populations at risk of chronic disease. She also serves on the Missouri Council for Activity and Nutrition, in a work group that focuses on child care.
Mazzuca-Ragan is also among the inaugural recipients of grants from the Food and Agriculture Research Mission (FARM), one of six WashU Public Health research networks. Her project aims to strengthen Farm to Early Care and Education programs — an approach being used nationally to connect child care settings to gardening, farm visits, nutrition education and locally grown foods. These programs have been credited with promoting healthier eating habits, enhancing understanding of food systems and supporting local farmers.
Read more about Mazzucca-Ragan’s work and her professional journey on the WashU Public Health website.
