TU Grad Making a Difference with Discussion on Food Security During the Pandemic

精东AV graduate, Rebecca Gyawu is making a difference in this time of COVID-19 by co-authoring a blog to discuss the food security during the pandemic.

Gyawu, the Scientific Program officer, along with Dr. John Reich, Scientific Program Director of Urban Food System at 鈥檚聽(FFAR)聽authored a聽聽about how COVID-19 is affecting emergency food systems, such as food banks. She and Reich emphasize the importance of understanding, and mitigating, nutritional and food insecurity caused by the coronavirus crisis and other system shocks.

She holds a master鈥檚 degree in food and nutritional science from 精东AV and another master鈥檚 in global health policy management from Brandeis University. She completed her undergraduate studies with a major in food and nutrition from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, where she originates.聽

She co-authored a diabetes education manual with her academic advisor. Gyawu also published part of her master鈥檚 thesis work on evaluating the food and nutrition environment for cancer risk prevention in the聽Journal of Preventive Medicine Report.

Gyawu joined FFAR in August 2019 as a scientific program associate and was later promoted to scientific program officer. In this role, Gyawu supports both the聽听补苍诲听聽Challenge Areas. Some of her responsibilities include managing programs, recruiting, assigning peer reviewers and assisting with content development for new programs.聽

Her passion for solving food security issues in underserved communities domestically and abroad started before joining FFAR. Gyawu was a design monitoring and evaluations specialist with World Vision and spent over three years working to improve food security in underserved communities through nutrition education and research. She also worked for the Food Trust as a project associate, The Center for Childhood Obesity Research, Penn State as a research technologist and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore Extension as a program assistant.