CDC Food is Medicine Fellow – Nutrition & Obesity Fellowship

About the role

This fellowship is designed as a training experience that provides hands-on learning in policy, systems, and environmental approaches to promoting healthy food access and reducing food and nutrition insecurity. Through structured mentorship and experiential learning, the fellow will strengthen skills in public health practice, implementation science, program planning, evaluation, and knowledge translation while gaining an understanding of CDC's role in advancing nutrition and chronic disease prevention. The fellow will receive training through participation in applied projects, exposure to evidence-based public health strategies, and opportunities to develop technical and scientific communication skills. Throughout the fellowship, the fellow will engage with CDC SMEs and public health professionals from state and local health departments, national associations, professional organizations, industry stakeholders, community-based organizations, federal partners, and the Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research and Evaluation Network (NOPREN).

Training opportunities

• Receiving training in assessing community programs that increase access to healthy foods, including fruit and vegetable voucher incentive and produce prescription programs, and applying nutrition standards for charitable food settings. Under the guidance of mentors, you will learn approaches for inventorying resources, identifying training needs, evaluating program metrics, and recognizing implementation gaps and practitioner needs.
• Developing knowledge of policy, systems, and environmental strategies by learning methods to support community food system action planning and prioritization related to food and nutrition insecurity.
• Gaining experience with community-engaged public health approaches by participating in activities that examine fruit and vegetable voucher and produce prescription programs, culturally responsive food access strategies, and tailored communication approaches that support populations at greatest risk of nutrition insecurity.
• Building skills in implementation science by learning to apply evidence-based frameworks to program design, implementation, and evaluation for nutrition and food access initiatives.
• Receiving mentorship in identifying and assessing promising and emerging practices and learning how evidence can be used to develop criteria and technical resources that inform public health programs and practitioners.
• Strengthening scientific communication skills by preparing written items, developing presentations, and presenting findings to a variety of public health audiences. You will also gain experience through participation in Division groups and training activities that support translation, evaluation, and dissemination of evidence-based public health practices.

Learning objectives

• Learn how to identify resources, training needs, and metrics related to community programs to increase access to healthy foods, including food is medicine programs, fruit and vegetable voucher incentive programs, nutrition standards for charitable food settings and more, to determine gaps and timely practitioner needs.
• Investigate using implementation science frameworks, contextual aspects that impact program development, implementation and evaluation of fruit and vegetable voucher/produce prescription programs and other food access programs.
• Develop skills in presenting findings to a range of audiences through written means and oral opportunities, including through participating with various Division workgroups to collaborate on a range of translation- and evaluation-related projects.

Qualifications

The qualified candidate should have received a master's degree in one of the relevant fields. Degree must have been received within the past five years.

Preferred skills

• Familiarity with policy and/or environmental change strategies that address nutrition, food security, or obesity
• Experience in nutrition, food security, and/or chronic disease prevention
• Familiarity with Tribal Nations to advance public health programs and priorities
• Knowledge of analytical techniques and previous scientific writing experience

Pay

$3,589.83 – $5,439.25 Monthly

Schedule

This appointment is full time. Anticipated appointment start date is September 1, 2026 (start date is flexible). The appointment will initially be for one year, but may be renewed upon recommendation of CDC and is contingent on the availability of funds.