Dr. Alexandra van den Berg is a Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Health Promotion in the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living (the Center) at The University of Texas Houston School of Public Health in Austin. She received her Master of Public Health degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health. Subsequently, she received her PhD from the University of Texas and completed a NCI post-doctoral fellowship under the leadership of Dr. Hoelscher.
Dr. van den Berg has over 20 years of experience in the development and evaluation of environmental and behaviorally-based nutrition and physical activity school-based and community interventions targeting children and families, with a focus on underserved families. Her research can be described by three broad themes:1) development, implementation and evaluation of cost-effective and sustainable interventions that increase access to healthy foods and promote sustainable local food systems; 2) examination of the relationship between environmental factors and subsequent health behaviors of children and their families; and 3) investigation of the role of health education/promotion in optimizing behavioral responses of children and their families to their environments.
Dr. van den Berg is currently the Principal Investigator (PI) of the GAVA (the Go Austin!/Vamos Austin!) study which is a community based, multi-component obesity intervention designed to synergistically target the built and policy environments in low-income communities using a coalition-driven, system approach to produce changes that are designed to comprehensively address the obesogenic environment of children and adults. She is also the PI of a study measuring the impact of different strategies to increase access to healthy foods in low-income communities: mobile food trucks, school farm stands and a healthy corner stores initiative. In addition, she is also a Co-I on the NIH-funded SPROUTS study, which measures the impact of school gardens on low-income families’ nutritional status. She recently completed 2 large studies including a 5-year USDA-funded randomized controlled trial (Texas, Grow, Eat, Go!) to study the effects of school garden-based and physical activity programs on children’s obesity status and their dietary and physical activity behaviors and a large policy evaluation study measuring the impact of two state and federal policies affecting young children’s eating and physical activity behaviors (T-COPPE).