Disparities in Hispanic Caribbean Nutrition and Chronic Disease

Dr. Melissa Fuster Thumbnail

“I also became very aware that we, as a profession, meaning public health nutrition, tend to overemphasize culture at the expense of structural factors.”- Dr. Melissa Fuster.

In this episode, Dr. Melissa Fuster talks about the influence of cultural and structural factors on nutritional practices through the lens of Hispanic Caribbean communities. Dr. Fuster further talks about ethnic restaurants' nutrition environments and ties with healthy eating practices for chronic disease prevention and management. 


Dr. Melissa Fuster is Associate Professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Her research examines the contextual factors influencing food practices and the policies and interventions implemented to improve them, as featured in her new book, Caribeños at the Table: How Migration, Health, and Race Intersect in New York City, with University of North Carolina Press, and current research with the Latin American Restaurants in Action (LARiA) Project, engaging Latin restaurants in designing and implementing innovations to facilitate healthier eating. She completed her Ph.D. in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition at the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, and a postdoctoral fellowship in food studies at New York University. Before joining the faculty at Tulane, she was an Assistant Professor at the City University of New York Brooklyn College. 

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