A public health scientist with expertise in community-based nutrition and physical activity intervention research, Dr. Rebecca Seguin-Fowler will provide administrative leadership for the organization’s social and behavioral intervention research initiative. She also will serve as the Healthy Texas community health research director, leading and fostering closer integration of AgriLife Research and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension efforts.

Her current research focuses on understanding how people’s social, food and physical activity environments influence behavior change and maintenance—particularly in at-risk populations and settings, such as low-income families and rural communities. Combining her interests in behavioral theory, health communications and the context in which people develop, change, and maintain health behaviors, Seguin-Fowler has co-developed comprehensive curricula and trainings for evidence-based health promotion programs to benefit midlife and older women. To date, more than 4,000 health educators in 48 states have been trained to implement these community-based physical activity and nutrition programs in predominantly non-urban areas.

Seguin-Fowler has secured more than $12M in competitive funding to support her research, with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She has received numerous awards throughout her career including the Mead Johnson Award from the American Society for Nutrition, the Citation Abstract Excellence Award from the Society of Behavioral Medicine Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions, and a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

A registered dietician, Seguin-Fowler received her bachelor’s degree in clinical exercise physiology from Boston University, and a master’s degree in nutrition communication and a doctorate in food policy and applied nutrition from Tufts University in Boston.