Areas of Expertise

• Food systems and community food access to support nutrition security

• Pragmatic approaches to evaluate community-adaptive implementation strategies

• Policy, systems, and environmental approaches to community nutrition

Food Story

Growing up in rural Wisconsin, Heidi Blanck spent a lot of her youth exploring the fields and natural spaces near her home. Blanck also helped tend to a large family garden, learned how to cook and bake at an early age, and had roles in raising chickens and livestock during her childhood. She went off to college to study biology, chemistry and scientific methodology, which were distinct approaches that were mostly done in labs and classrooms away from the natural world. During her graduate school journey, Blanck made a critical pivot from molecular biology to nutritional sciences and epidemiology. This helped her re-center her interest in the connections to growing and eating food and the consequences of our current food systems on planetary and human health.

Publications

Academic History

Ph.D., Emory University, Atlanta GA, 1999
Nutrition and Health Sciences Doctoral Program 
Specialization: Epidemiology  

M.S., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI, 1994
Cellular and Molecular Biology: Biology of adenovirus, viral transcription mechanisms

B.S., Saint Mary’s College of Minnesota, Winona, MN, 1992
Biology Major; Chemistry and History Minors, Summa Cum Laude