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CSDE Committees: Executive Committee Member

CSDE Research Areas:

• Environments and Populations
• Health of People and Populations

In the News:

• 15 CSDE Affiliates Part of 9 Teams Receiving UW Population Health Initiative Awards (6/26/2020)
• Affiliates Jones-Smith, Knox, Oddo and CSDE Scientist Hurvitz co-author Study on Seattle’s Sweetened Beverage Tax (8/16/2020)
• Congratulations to Participants in CSDE’s Grant Writing Workshop (9/26/2019)
• CSDE Affiliates Knox and Jones-Smith Awarded Grant from the Royalty Research Fund! (9/2/2022)
• CSDE Welcomes Four More Faculty Affiliates! (11/19/2018)
• Jones-Smith, Knox, Hurvitz, Hamilton, and Colleagues Publish New Research in Food Policy (6/23/2022)
• Melissa Knox and Jessica Jones-Smith Win PAA Poster Session on Health and Mortality (4/15/2019)
• Melissa Knox, Jessica Jones-Smith, and Vanessa Oddo Analyze Public Perception of Seattle’s Soda Tax (6/29/2019)
• New Research from Jones-Smith and Co-Authors Assesses Impacts of Two Programs Supporting Meal Provision to School Children During Pandemic Closures (4/15/2022)
• New Research from Knox, Jones-Smith, and Colleagues Further Evaluates the Effects of Seattle’s Sweetened Beverage Tax (5/6/2022)
• New Research on the Effects of the Seattle Sweetened Beverage Tax from Fretts, Knox, Jones-Smith, and Colleagues (3/4/2022)
• Smith, Hajat, Hurvitz, and Hamilton Receive NIH Funding to Study Role of Racism in Urban Planning Policies and Practices (10/31/2022)

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Dr. Jones-Smith is an associate professor in the departments of Health Systems and Population Health and Epidemiology and a core faculty member of the Nutrition Sciences Program. She is an epidemiologist, health policy researcher, and population heath scientist with expertise in social and structural determinants of weight-related health. Specifically, her research focuses on investigating upstream drivers of nutrition-related health inequities and follows three main lines: 1) Identifying the Health Impacts of Policies that Address Social and Structural Determinants; 2) Rigorous Evaluation of Nutrition Policies Aimed at Improving Dietary Intake and Population Health; 3) Identifying the role of economic and community resources, including food environments, in weight-related health.

Her research is interdisciplinary and is focused on obtaining actionable results to address upstream social factors, contexts, and policies that influence population health. Her research has been funded by diverse sources including the National Institutes of Health, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the City of Seattle.

 

Related to the work of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, Dr. Jones-Smith is a population health scientist and has repeatedly received support from the Population Dynamics Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for her research, including a fully funded 2-year traineeship with the Carolina Population Center as a doctoral student, a K99/R00 Early Independence Career Award, and most recently an NIH R01 award.

 

Dr. Jones-Smith has a Masters of Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley, a doctorate in Nutrition Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and post-doctoral training in health inequities and causal inference.