天美传媒

Dr. Sharma is a trained dietitian and physical therapist. As a health professional, she strongly felt she was treating preventable diseases stemming from poor lifestyles: heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension. She saw the repercussions were devastating to the community. Her love for teaching, academics and the community-led her to pursue a Ph.D. in public health, focusing on epidemiology. Her interest is in nutrition and physical activity-based interventions to address obesity via school, family, and the community, predominantly in low-income minority populations. She co-founded Brighter Bites, a partner program of the Houston Food Bank, and serves on the Mayor of Houston’s Go Healthy Houston Task Force. She is currently working on Healthy Eating Active Living (HE/AL). Dr. Sharma explains, “HE/AL is designed to promote healthy birth outcomes and prevent maternally and childhood obesity among low-income Medicaid patients. The project will use evidence-based strategies from Brighter Bites, Legacy of Health, and The Happy Kitchen/La Cocina Alegre to promote breastfeeding and physical activity among pregnant women and women with infants. Families will receive free group education classes (nutrition, cooking, and exercise) and 30 lbs of fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables weekly for 12 weeks. We will be tracking the effect of the program on maternal weight gain during pregnancy, gestational diabetes, pregnancy-induced hypertension, infant birth weight, breastfeeding, and infant weight gain in the first year of life.”

 



Dr. Ridberg’s research sits at the intersection of community nutrition and health care delivery with a focus on “food is medicine” programs and policies aimed to improve food security, nutrition security and health equity. Highly collaborative, her publications dedicated to produce prescription programs include outcomes for pregnant women, children and households; within rural Tribal communities; as part of a health system’s electronic medical record keeping; and on health care providers’ clinical workflow. She will bring this expertise to the Friedman School while pursuing additional interdisciplinary collaborations across Tufts and with external institutions and organizations. Her prior research and policy advocacy focused on the scaling of regional food systems’ distribution infrastructure through institutional purchasing policies (e.g. in schools, hospitals, state agencies and prisons) as well as business development for regional food hubs.
Dr. Ridberg will aim to create new interlinkages and synergies with the Tufts School of Medicine around research and translation on Food is Medicine and nutrition security.
Dr. Ridberg serves as a member of the California Food is Medicine Coalition’s Medical Advisory Council and is an external consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Food Initiative.






Dr. Ridberg returns to the Friedman School more than a decade after receiving her Master’s degree in its Agriculture, Food and Environment program, and comes most recently from the University of California, Davis, where she earned her PhD in Nursing Science and Health Care Leadership at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. She completed postdoctoral training within the UC Davis School of Medicine as well as its Center for Healthcare Policy and Research.