Donna Johnson
Professor Emeritus, Health Services
UW Emeritus
Tel: 206-685-1068
CSDE Research Areas:
- Environments and Populations
- Health of People and Populations
Donna Johnson’s research at the UW has been devoted to bringing the rigors of academic thinking to the practice of public health nutrition. Her research interests include pediatric nutrition, efficacy of public health nutrition interventions, and public health approaches to obesity, and she seeks to advance understandings about the process of public health practice in the core functions of assessment, assurance, and policy development. In the past decade she has published results of studies on the impact of nutrition and physical activity policies in school and child care settings, collaborative and community-based processes to assure access to healthy foods, and interventions to assure that families can provide health enhancing environments for their children. Publications have appeared in Public Health Nutrition, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Preventing Chronic Disease, and the American Journal of Health Promotion. She has several projects underway at the moment that build on methods and understandings that she and her team have developed about the process of nutrition policy development and community-based research. These include studies of the population health impacts of nutrition labeling, rural food access, access to drinking water in schools, and adoption of nutritional quality guidelines in governmental purchasing.