Formative years influence researcher’s pursuits on food, nutrition security
Q&A with Jennifer Garner
John G. Searle Assistant Professor of Nutritional Sciences
Growing up in a rural community, where food security was an integral aspect of daily life, sparked a deep appreciation for nutrition and community health for Jennifer Garner.
Garner, a registered dietitian and community-engaged nutrition interventionist, is the John G. Searle Assistant Professor of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Her research focuses on developing collaborative programs to enhance food and nutrition security, crucial for individual and community well-being. She engages with a broad spectrum of partners across various sectors, utilizing diverse research methods to shape impactful health policies and practices.
She is focused on co-creating and evaluating programs designed to support biological, social and community health with a particular focus on food and nutrition security. This work is possible thanks to close relationships with an interdisciplinary mix of partners across academic, healthcare, agricultural, social service, nonprofit and for-profit sectors.
Her team, the Garner Research Group, leverages a diverse set of methods to conduct such research, integrating quantitative and qualitative data toward unique insights. The ultimate aim of this research is to inform clinical and community practice and policies related to nutrition, food systems, and community development.
Garner holds a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree in Dietetics from Central Michigan University. Her interests include biopsychosocial health, food behaviors, food environment, food and nutrition security, community development, food policy, cross-sector partnerships, and health equity.
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Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Ruth, Michigan, a small farming community in Huron County where the most prominent feature is the Cooperative Elevator and its multiple grain bins. Another key feature of the community is the church, a beautiful building with a stone exterior, vaulted ceiling, thick wood beams, and more than a dozen stained glass windows. In hindsight, I can see how these were also symbols of the community’s values: communal self-reliance and faith. Certainly, the grandeur of these structures belied the lower socioeconomic position occupied by many families in the region, but this was not readily apparent to me during my formative years; when everyone around you is also living modestly, and taking pride in their respective livelihoods, it’s not intuitive to feel deprived. My experience growing up in a rural community and my reflections on how it has evolved since my childhood definitely have had a formative influence on my research pursuits.
Is there anything in your past that helped lead you to your interest in public health?
I have a picture from my childhood in which I’m standing ankle-deep in the fresh-tilled soil of our family’s garden—to my dad’s chagrin. Both of my parents grew up either farming or with a large family garden, and they continued this tradition with our family. Our garden plot was nearly as large as our single wide trailer, and, in hindsight, was a critical food resource for our family. A lot of effort went into planting, tending, harvesting and preserving the produce to eat throughout the year. Our garden—initiated annually by my dad—together with my mom’s meticulous attention to food prices, sales, couponing and meal planning ensured we had enough to eat and that our meals were wholesome. My journey to public health nutrition was not intentional. I had planned on becoming a clinical dietitian and working at our local rural hospital, but I think these formative years seeded in me a deep appreciation for community culture, food systems, food work and family/social support—all of which now serves as the backbone of my research efforts.
What drew you into nutrition specifically?
I was a competitive runner in high school and appreciated the importance of nutrition in health and performance. As I considered potential career opportunities with an eye toward staying in the county where I grew up—a medically underserved region—studying nutrition and becoming a clinical dietitian seemed like a very intuitive and pragmatic choice.
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What parts of public health are the most interesting for you?
While I am a dietitian with specific expertise in nutrition, what I appreciate about public health is that it’s grounded in the understanding that no one “part” of the field has all the answers to advancing community well-being; it’s only by working together across sub-fields and sectors that we can improve public health outcomes.
What is a significant challenge that you have overcome throughout your career in public health?
A year into my time at Central Michigan, I was notified of my potential eligibility for the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program because I was a first-generation college student from a low-income family. I was very put off by the prospect of applying to a program based on these attributes. I had worked incredibly hard throughout my schooling—too hard probably, including pulling “all-nighters” as far back as my freshman year of high school to perfect papers and projects—and was skeptical that such a program was necessary or helpful. It boasted the opportunity to get formal support and preparation for a PhD, but I could not fathom having such a high-falutin degree nor pursuing the type of work that would require a PhD. All of this to say, there were certainly challenges I experienced related to these traditional measures of privilege—and the lack thereof—but I think the greatest obstacle I’ve ever had to overcome is my own pride, close mindedness and fear of failure.
Where did you work before you came to Michigan?
My first position after my PhD was as an assistant professor at Ohio State University (please note: I dutifully avoided saying “THE” Ohio State during my time there). By this point, I had of course come to appreciate the prospect of working in higher education. One of the things I enjoyed about the dietetics shadowing I did in high school was also a feature of faculty life: facilitating group-based education and supporting an individual’s self-efficacy through one-on-one mentoring, with the added bonus of channeling my curiosity and commitment to community through research. I was hired via the Initiative for Agri-Cultural Transformation, which was a great fit for my work at the intersection of nutrition, health, food systems and food policy, and had a dual appointment in the College of Medicine and the College of Public Affairs.
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What attracted you to work at Michigan Public Health?
The Department of Nutritional Sciences and School of Public Health had been on my radar since graduate school when considering potential postdoctoral opportunities. My doctoral advisor at Cornell, Rebecca Seguin-Fowler, had trained in public health and I assisted with her Intro to Public Health course. While I don’t have a degree in public health, the field’s major theories and perspectives form the basis of my work. In fact, many of my colleagues at Ohio State assumed I was based in the College of Public Health there. I appreciate the opportunity to be based in a nutrition department rooted in public health. And, of course, we were thrilled to move back home to Michigan.
What is your main area of research? What drew you to work in that area?
Much of my research is focused on food and nutrition security, including observational studies to understand the risks for and consequences of food and nutrition insecurity and intervention studies to test strategies for addressing such insecurity. Nutrition is fascinating to study because food is a basic need and therefore very consequential to our physical well-being, but also rooted in cultural and ecological factors and therefore very consequential to our social well-being as well. By focusing on food and nutrition security, I get to support comprehensive efforts for improving physical and social health outcomes while also considering the interesting and complex interplay between our body’s biology system and the economic, ecological, social and political systems that influence so many aspects of our day-to-day life.