About Us

About Us

Our Healthy Living Labs focus on addressing health disparities and promoting health equity through clinical and community-engaged randomized controlled trials as well as dissemination and implementation research and related projects. Our research projects are focused on health equity and health disparities; food access, food systems, food insecurity, and dietary patterns and behaviors; physical activity behaviors and intervention development; policy system and environmental change; citizen science and community-engaged research; and mHealth technologies for monitoring, assessment, and intervention implementation. We aim to understand the means of building communities around healthy living and facilitating the delivery of current, accurate, evidence-based programs, guidelines, and information that supports healthier living.

Meet Our Team

Faculty

Postdoctoral Researchers

Research Staff

FACULTY

Rebecca Seguin-Fowler, Ph.D., R.D.N., L.D., C.S.C.S.

Director of Health Living and Associate Director, Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture, & Professor of Nutrition, Texas A&M University

Research Projects

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I am a public health scientist and Associate Director for the Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture. For more than two decades, my work has centered on improving health in underserved and underrepresented communities. I have led widely disseminated dietary and physical activity interventions, innovative food systems projects, and adapted evidence-based programs for at-risk populations. My current research examines how social, food, and physical activity environments influence behavior change and long-term maintenance, particularly among low-income and rural populations. My programs have reached nearly every state in the U.S., as well as several other countries, helping hundreds of thousands of individuals improve their health and providing critical skill-building and support to a vast range of health educators working to serve their local communities.

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Chad Rethorst, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture

Research Projects

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I am an Associate Professor at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Dallas, the Department of Nutrition at Texas A&M, and an Associate Member of the Institute for Advancing Health through Agriculture. I obtained a Ph.D. in Kinesiology from Arizona State University, a Masters degree in Counseling and Sport Psychology from Boston University, and completed a T32 fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center. I was previously on faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center and was Director of Clinical Research at WW (formerly Weight Watchers). My research focuses on the development and optimization of behavioral interventions to improve the health of persons with chronic medical conditions and the use of digital technologies in the delivery and evaluation of behavior change interventions.

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Lexi MacMillan Uribe, Ph.D., R.D.N.

Assistant Professor, Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture

Research Projects

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I am a bicultural and bilingual health equity researcher who uses community-informed strategies to develop, adapt, and evaluate health promotion programs that address food and nutrition security and reduce chronic disease risk in diverse, underserved communities. More specifically, my research aims to evaluate programs and strategies for improving diet- and chronic disease-related outcomes; use community-informed and mixed-methods approaches to inform health promotion programs; understand the role of culture in diet and incorporating culture into program development; develop valid and reliable evaluation tools for health promotion programs; and leverage digital technology to deliver health education and information.

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Jacob Szeszulski, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture

Research Projects

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My primary research interest is in the development, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of school- and community-based physical activity and nutrition programs for youth. Specifically, I am interested in understanding policies, systems, and environments that affect youth physical activity and nutrition, identifying organizational and contextual factors that affect the delivery of school- and community-based programs, and using community-based participatory research approaches to reduce disparities in youth’s health behaviors, and subsequent health outcomes.

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