Biography

Dr. Shelnutt is an Associate Professor and Extension Nutrition Specialist. She is a Registered Dietitian and works closely with first year students in the Master of Science-Dietetic Internship Program as part of their Nutrition Education and Wellness Concentration where they spend a year learning about Extension and developing nutrition education materials.

Dr. Shelnutt is a true Gator at heart having received her BS and PhD in Food Science and Human Nutrition from the University of Florida. She obtained her Masters in Clinical Nutrition and completed her dietetic internship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Since starting her current position, Dr. Shelnutt has provided statewide leadership for her Extension program that focuses on obesity prevention in children, adolescents, and young adults. She serves as the Principal Investigator of the Family Nutrition Program (Florida’s SNAP-Education Program), which teaches families eligible for SNAP benefits to make better food and physical activity choices. The Family Nutrition Program also helps make communities healthier with the Farm to School, Farm to Community Program, which helps bring fresh, local foods to schools and communities. Dr. Shelnutt has developed curricula and Extension publications based on the most updated dietary guidance. She also works with a multistate research team using Community-Based Participatory Research to develop tools to evaluate the healthfulness of different campuses and communities.

Dr. Shelnutt is married to David, a principal at Gainesville High School, and they have two beautiful daughters, Laura and Emily, who keep them busy and entertained.

Research Interests

Dr. Shelnutt is an associate professor and Extension nutrition specialist. Her research focuses on improving the environment of low-income families to support making the healthy choice the easy choice. This work includes developing and adapting tools that measure perceptions of the healthfulness of the environment as well as tools that objectively measure the healthfulness of the environment. She is currently a member of a multi-state research team that has been developing tools to measure the healthfulness of college campuses and is leading the subcommittee to adapt these tools for low-income neighborhoods. This work is reported under the approved multistate project NCll93: Using Behavioral and Environmental Tools to Identify Weight-Related Factors Associated with Health in Communities of Young Adults. In addition, Dr. Shelnutt is currently a co-PI of a five-year USDA NIFA AFRI titled Advancing and Expanding HomeStyles: Shaping HOME Environments and LifeSTYLES to Prevent Childhood Obesity, which will develop a curriculum to teach parents of 6-11 year olds to make positive changes to their home environments and weight-related behaviors such as diet, physical activity, and sleep to reduce the risk of childhood obesity. Her research concentrates on

• childhood obesity
• nutrition education
• environment
• low-income families