Dr. Diana Grigsby-Toussaint is the founder of The Social Epidemiology Lab and an Associate Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences and of Epidemiology at Brown School of Public Health. As a social epidemiologist, her research seeks to capture complex processes in the food, social, and built environments to facilitate a better understanding of their influence on what has been coined the three pillars of health: diet, physical activity, and sleep. She is particularly interested in vulnerable (e.g., low-income) and racial/ethnic populations across various stages of human development.

Her work is grounded primarily in theoretical approaches from epidemiology (documenting determinants and distribution of risk in populations), nutrition (processes by which individuals obtain and utilize food), and geography (the role of place in shaping health risk). In addition to exploring non-communicable disease risks among vulnerable populations in the US, she is also exploring the impact of the nutrition transition on health status in Ecuador and Uganda.

Dr. Grigsby- Toussaint’s research has been supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Science Foundation, and her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, the Dallas Morning News, and the Chicago Tribune. She currently serves as an Associate Editor for BMC Public Health.

Brown Univeristy Faculty profile: Diana Grigsby-Toussaint