Saria Lofton
Assistant Professor
Research Interests
- I lead community-engaged “Food is Medicine” research focused on improving cardiometabolic health among Black women, with current projects centered in Mile Square Health Center clinics. Our most recent work includes an NIH-funded FIM+DASH research study which will evaluate a tailored Food is Medicine program that feature nutrition, chef driven cooking classes, food delivery and self-management for Black women with hypertension and obesity. I am also launching FIM-BCS, a mostly remote Food is Medicine pilot for Black breast cancer survivors focused on healthy eating, cancer prevention behaviors and will feature a recipe generator for participants.
- Undergraduate research opportunities in my lab span patient-facing and non–patient-facing roles. Students can contribute to:
- - Clinical/community research: participant outreach and scheduling, survey administration, data quality checks, and intervention support (training provided; professionalism and reliability matter most).
- - Recipe database & Excel automation (Food is Medicine Recipe Generator): maintaining a structured recipe spreadsheet, standardizing ingredients, calculating cost per serving, and supporting nutrition scoring (Excel/Google Sheets; attention to detail required).
- - Quantitative support: cleaning and analyzing survey and clinical data; creating reproducible analysis workflows (R preferred; Python welcome).
- - Manuscript support: conducting structured literature searches and producing annotated literature reviews (brief summaries, key findings, strengths/limitations, and relevance) to support manuscripts and grant writing.
At a Glance
- Title Assistant Professor
- College College of Nursing
- Department Department of Population Health Nursing Science
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