Food and Nutrition Security
Empowering resilient solutions rooted in data
Cluster Goals
Nutrition plays an important role in mental and physical health, making food and nutrition security an increasingly important goal for reducing health disparities. Yet hundreds of millions of people around the world experience hunger, and more than two billion people globally are malnourished. This represents a complex challenge both in Tennessee and around the world.
To improve food and nutrition security, the Food and Nutritional Security cluster at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, aims to address the intertwined components of food availability, accessibility, and utilization by focusing on people’s food acquisition behaviors and other food-related choices. To support improvements in health, we will use an implementation science framework as we translate our research into practice on campus, with health care and food bank partners, and across Tennessee communities.
Together we will use a human-centered approach to enrich the quality of people’s diets, address individuals’ food-associated health disparities, and contribute to sustainable food systems that lead to equitable outcomes.
Partners for Health
We’re bringing together researchers with diverse areas of expertise, including:
- Food supply chains
- Food quality and safety
- Food processing and engineering
- Consumer behaviors and perceptions related to food
- Nutrition, dietary quality, and health outcomes
- Sustainability and food waste reduction
- Translating food and health research to communities
Ready to take the next step?
Why UT?
UT is committed to advancing human health and wellness. Within that focal area, food and nutrition security is a strategic priority. The cluster will lead UT to national prominence in the field by leveraging a sustainable food systems perspective made possible through collaboration and UT’s land-grant university resources.
By forging strong connections between social and behavioral sciences, food sciences, and resource economics, we’ll establish a path for innovative new research and academic programming to benefit our communities. UT Extension provides a critical structure for sharing insights with communities, partnering with local food system stakeholders, and providing technical and educational programming. We also leverage connections with the UT One Health Initiative.
The cluster’s work builds on and contributes to several key UT programs and initiatives to translate research into practice and maximize its combined impacts. For example, cluster faculty members support UT’s innovative long-term partnership with Cherokee Health Systems—a federally qualified health center serving more than 70,000 Tennesseans—through scholarship, student education, provider training, and client visits.
We also support research, scholarship, and training that uses the food4VOLS program launched in the Department of Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management’s Culinary Institute to study food upcycling models and increase food security education on college campuses. The program, currently the only of its kind in the US, is serving as a model for programs at other universities.
Join Our Academic Community
Explore the links below to learn more about open positions. Contact the faculty lead if you don’t see an open position aligned with your skill set or if you’re a current UT faculty member who wants to get involved.
Hiring Units
- College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences
- College of Nursing
- Herbert College of Agriculture
- UT Extension
New Positions
POSTED: Apply Here
Associate or Full Professor
Department of Nutrition/Department of Family and Consumer Sciences
Focus: Diet quality, food and nutrition security
POSTED: Apply Here
Assistant or Associate Professor
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics/Department of Nutrition
Focus: Household food acquisition behavior
POSTED: Apply Here
Assistant Professor
College of Nursing
Focus: Health disparities
PLANNED
Assistant Professor
Department of Food Science
Focus: Sensory aspects of repurposed and upcycled foods
PLANNED
Assistant Professor
Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management
Focus: Sustainability and consumer behavior
PLANNED
Assistant Professor
Department of Family and Consumer Sciences
Focus: Translational research
Meet Our Cluster Community
Faculty Lead
Hollie Raynor
Professor of Nutrition and Executive Associate Dean of Research and Operations, College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences
Phone: 865-974-9126, ext.1
Email: hraynor@utk.edu
Faculty
-
Research Assistant Professor & Assistant Director, Smith Center for International Sustainable Agriculture
population dynamics of rural communities, sustainable agriculture development for smallholder farmers, nutrition sensitive agricultural approaches for development
-
Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Studies; Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management
brand extensions, brand collaborations, international retailing
-
Professor, Ecology & Environmental Biology & Director, National Institute for Modeling Biological Systems
evolution, ecology, and sociobiology of infectious disease epidemiology; mathematical modeling; one health; economic and behavioral epidemiology; biosecurity
-
Professor & Faculty Fellow, Food Science
microbiology, food sciences, industrial biotechnology, nutrition and dietetics, chemical engineering, veterinary sciences
-
Associate Professor, Entomology and Plant Pathology
host-pathogen-vector interactions, native tree conservation, preservation of biodiversity in North American forests, global forest and tree health
-
Assistant Professor, Family and Consumer Sciences
extension and outreach programming promoting nutrition security, chronic disease prevention and management, healthy aging
-
Professor, School of Natural Resources
One Health, sea turtle hatchling health and the impact of environmental stressors, the impact of contaminants on marine mammals
-
Assistant Professor, Family and Consumer Sciences
behavioral economics, workforce development for limited resource populations, programming for limited resource audiences, family resource management
-
Clinical Professor, Biomedical & Diagnostic Sciences
food safety and public health issues
-
Assistant Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics
social determinants of health, urban/rural differences in health outcomes, policy and program evaluation