Jaimie N. Davis, PhD, is a full professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Davis received her BS in nutritional sciences from UT- Austin, where she became a practicing registered dietitian. She later earned her PhD in nutritional sciences from UT-Austin and then moved to Los Angeles, where she did her postdoctoral fellowship and then transitioned to faculty at The University of Southern California specializing in prevention and treatment of childhood obesity. Over the past 20 years, her research has focused on designing and implementing dietary and exercise interventions to reduce obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes risk factors in youth and adults. She has conducted numerous clinical and community- and school-based randomized controlled trials with high-risk populations. She has over 100 peer-reviewed articles that address the effects of behaviors (both dietary and physical activity behaviors) and how changes in these behaviors impact and mediate changes in adiposity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiometabolic disease risk factors. She has served as principal investigator on numerous federal and foundation grants.
Questions & Answers
The study, which was primarily funded by NIH, was conducted through a collaboration with UT-Austin, UT Health School of Public Health, Texas A&M AgriLife, and Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation. This study was a school-based cluster randomized controlled trial to test the effects of Texas Sprouts on health and academic outcomes in 16 low-income, primarily Hispanic elementary schools in Central Texas.
We developed and tested the curriculum with 400 fourth- and fifth-grade students from primarily low-income and Hispanic families in our pilot study LA Sprouts. We then modified the curriculum to include third-grade students and to reflect current Texas standardized testing concepts.
By partnering with the non-profit Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation, we were able to provide training/resources to the schools after the NIH grant funding ended so that these schools could sustain and scale their garden programs after the tenure of the grant. This was key to helping schools continue maintaining their school garden programs. Even though the grant ended over 3 years ago, we still provide trainings, garden resources, and support to all schools that participated in the initial Texas Sprouts trial. We have also expanded the training and support to over 100 schools in Central Texas.
It is crucial to partner with non-profits and foundations in the community to be able to sustain and scale garden-based programming.