Lanae Hood

Dr. Lanae B. Hood serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Health and Human Performance at Meredith College since 2017. She specializes in public health, nutrition, and food science education. Her research focuses on food insecurity, community-based participatory methods, and health disparities, particularly in rural and college campus contexts.

Dr. Hood holds a Ph.D. in Nutrition from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, an M.S. in Nutrition from Meredith College, and a B.A. in Political Science from Wheaton College (MA). She is actively involved with professional organizations including the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior and the American Public Health Association.

Her research interests include food security policy, refugee/immigrant health, and federal/state food assistance programs. She leads a multi-institutional study on college campus food insecurity and co-developed the Higher Education Food Insecurity Toolkit. She advises the Meredith College Nutrition and Wellness Association and contributes to the campus food pantry (The Daisy Trade).

Her work has been featured in journals like Frontiers in Public Health and Public Health Nutrition, with key contributions to understanding student hunger and policy advocacy. Notable recognitions include a featured paper in the Health Promotion Practice Journal's 2019 Reading List and inclusion in a U.S. Government Accountability Office report on food assistance programs.

Dr. Hood's advising roles include mentoring student researchers and serving on Meredith's Undergraduate Research Advisory Committee. Her future work emphasizes scalable interventions for food insecurity and community-engaged research methodologies.