Patti Risica

Dr. Risica is a contributing faculty member in the PhD in Public Health program. Dr. Risica has a B.S. from the Ohio State University, and MPH and DrPH from Johns Hopkins University and 6 years of previous experience in clinical nutrition. Upon joining Brown University, Dr. Risica was Director of Data Management and the Survey Center (1997-2001). In addition, Dr. Risica was Evaluation Director for the Center of Excellence in Women's Health (2003-2005). Dr. Risica previously served as Co-Investigator for a number of projects and currently functions as the Co-PI and Evaluation Coordinator for several ongoing large intervention projects involving nutrition, physical activity and smoking cessation. Dr. Risica was PI of [email protected] as well as two recently completed studies, "Baby's Breath: Reducing ETS Exposure of Pregnant Women and Newborns", and "SCRIPT New England: Postpartum Maintenance of Abstinence from Tobacco," all of which were initiated by Dr. Thomas Lasater (deceased). Dr. Risica is PI along with Dr. Kim Gans of a project creating and testing interventions to improve the food and physical activity environments of family child care homes (2014-2020) that is recently completed.

Dr. Risica has served as the Epidemiologist and Evaluator for the Initiative for Healthy Weight (IHW) for the Department of Health (DOH) (2009-2014). She also served in the same capacity for the CDC funded WISEWOMAN project (2015-2020) and for the Women's Cancer Screening and Colorectal Screening Programs (2017-2020). In these roles, Dr. Risica interfaced with many divisions and projects within the DOH as well as the many community partners working on IHW workgroups and projects.

Dr. Risica is also the immediate past President (2017-2019), current Advocacy Chairperson (2005-present) and is previous past President (2003-2004) for the Rhode Island Public Health Association, the RI affiliate of APHA. She has also previously served as a Board member of the Food and Nutrition Section, the Action Board and the Joint Policy Committee of the American Public Health Association. She is Past Chair of the Food and Nutrition Section (2006-2007).