UM Alumni Spotlight: Katie Janda-Thomte ’15

What did you study at University of Michigan?

MPH, HBHE School of Public Health 2015
Certificate in global health

What is your current position?

What sparked your interest in food systems?

I took Andy Jones’ Global Nutrition program evaluation course and ended up doing my MPH internship doing community-focused research in Bolivia on chronic disease management programs. Through that experience I realized the food system plays such a big part in our health and I wanted to focus more from a food systems perspective. I confirmed this interest area in a team-taught course with Andy Jones, Lesli Hoey, and Jennifer Blesh. I took that course and I don’t know if I’ve ever voraciously consumed content in a course like that before (and borderline since!). I became so captivated by this topic and also bridging many interests not only in public health, but community-focused public health and interdisciplinary thinking. Trying to better understand that at any day you can be in any community but there’s always going to be a food system, and it’s always going to impact people’s health either positively or potentially adversely. I think with that I really latched on with both hands and it’s been like that ever since. 

Did you know you wanted to become a professor?

I was reluctant! I was told by faculty in undergrad that academia would suit me and that I should consider it, so I had that in the back of my head. I always had an appreciation for teaching, but wasn’t convinced about the research aspect of academia when I started my MPH. During my MPH I had a variety of different research opportunities, but I don’t think it was until my very applied, in the field,  in the trenches experiences with my internship that I wanted to pursue a career in research and teaching. 

Your bio talks about designing community-engaged programs to address food insecurity, are there programs that you designed or found that work really well?

A big thread through a lot of my work and experiences is that context matters and place matters. As a caveat before I say anything, it’s really hard to have one size fits all solutions. Some of the work that I’ve done has forced me to learn that firsthand. There can be a lot of great literature on healthy corner store programs that work really well in Philadelphia and Chicago or other booming metropolis’ that can be walkable. In contrast, in the healthy corner store programs I helped evaluate in Austin, Texas during my doctoral program and post-doctoral fellowship, we didn’t see the same satisfaction, the same level of implementation. Austin is also a more car-dependent city that was never designed to have as many people that actually live there. Sometimes the corner stores that chose to “opt in” to the program happened to be across the street from a full-service grocery store or potentially were charging more for produce items, which doesn’t address the economic aspects of access, and these experiences might not be the case for other areas where this program was implemented. I think knowing the community you’re trying to work alongside is incredibly important. I think that’s been my number one lesson learned is listening to what the community members are experiencing, what they’re living, and what some of their behaviors are is really important. With that being said, I’ve gotten a lot of joy and learned so much from working alongside a couple of different non-profits as well as local government stakeholders within Austin and now in Waco, Texas. These stakeholders are supportive of trying to create a more robust and sustainable local food system that incorporates and tries to meet community members where they’re at, specifically in communities that have been underserved and marginalized historically.  Also, trying to make sure local farmers are receiving fair wages and fair compensation for produce even if they’re subsidizing it in those settings to make things more economically accessible. 

I’ve been very spoiled the last several years to be able to collaborate with some wonderful partners on evaluating those programs in Austin. We’ve found a lot of success in these programs that have really high satisfaction rates among customers. The initiative is called Fresh for Less, and it’s a healthy food access promotion program that has been able to evolve and pivot over the years but mainly has mobile markets that sell predominantly locally and organically grown produce as well as having some shelf-stable goods (beans, rice, pasta, tomato sauce, honey, etc.) that allow for a comprehensive meal in addition to the produce. Items are sold at economical prices found through price comparison analyses where we could sell organic goods for cheaper than large grocery stores (and sometimes cheaper than conventional produce!), and still accepting SNAP and double-up food bucks. It’s about not only trying to be strategically located, but economical, having policy-driven solutions, and a lot of support by local government and community stakeholders who are allowing these mobile markets to pop up. There were a couple recreation centers, churches, parks, elementary schools and other locations. Also, strategically timing them with pick-up or drop-off at schools, in-between services at different houses of worship, or a Saturday morning at a park. It’s been a fantastic opportunity to see many different groups of people come together to help implement this and actually meet people where they are or pivot with curb-side delivery during COVID. 

Unfortunately, evaluation can sometimes seem like a scary thing. If you’re an external evaluator you’re often seen as potentially coming in and telling someone they’re not doing their job well. Instead, it’s been a really wonderful partnership of how can we leverage the data that we are collecting in partnership with implementers to figure out how to best offer these programs to serve the people that need them the most. How can we improve an already great thing to make it even better, more sustainable, and more robust?

Solutions that are focused on trying to listen and understand the communities in which they are living and serving in – and also not afraid to get creative and try multiple approaches and can get data to see if they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. These programs that have community buy-in, are in response to community needs, and have creative ways to obtain data and evaluate success at multiple levels are the ones that have the most success. Maybe that does look like a healthy corner store in some communities or maybe it’s a food delivery model, or maybe it’s a mobile market, or maybe it’s a series of pop-up farmers’ markets. I think that’s something that’s been really exciting and life-giving to work on. 

Specifically at Baylor, I’ve been collaborating with the on-campus food pantry, but calling it just an on-campus food pantry is underselling it! They’re really trying to come up with a variety of solutions including having increased food options on campus, where you can get an economically priced meal. There are also community gardens, a free farmers’ market that pops up every semester, meal swipe sharing options, a $2 meal cafe, discussions on SNAP utilization resources, and taking a comprehensive and holistic approach to better understand not only food insecurity but basic needs of students. 

Do you have any advice for UM students interested in food systems careers?

Capitalize on the incredible faculty that you have! Not to sound too extreme about it, but Andy Jones’ class changed my life. I read an article he wrote in his class, and it was a supplemental article and not even assigned, about food insecurity measurement. Reading that article helped me cultivate my own interest within food insecurity but also think completely differently about research measures, methods, how definitions and what we measure actually matter and what that means for understanding prevalence. This allowed me to identify it as a research interest as I didn’t know it was one. I thought working in the food insecurity and hunger space  was just what I like to do to serve my community, I naively had not realized that research and public health approaches could be used to examine and ultimately  address these issues .

You have such incredible faculty, ask them questions, take their classes, and capitalize on opportunities that are relevant to your interests. I knew that I wanted to do a lot of international work and I’m so grateful that I did. If there are faculty doing things that are remotely related to what you’re interested in, talk to them, find out what they did. 

I also think that if you are interested in working in historically disadvantaged communities, then you need to make sure you are aware of where your privilege is, and do training in cultural humility to be able to be the best version of yourself and not perpetuating negative experiences that may have happened previously. Specifically, if it’s racially and ethnically diverse communities that speak other languages, taking classes to be able to speak in those languages. Being able to speak Spanish working not only in Bolivia but also in central Texas has been a huge advantage for me to cultivate relationships with community members. Making sure you’re not so focused only on the content area of your interests but also thinking about the other skills you should gain to round out to become who you want to be as a human. 

Finally, learn stats. It helps you understand and be a better consumer of information that’s out there. If you’re able to do statistics, have expertise in a specific software, and if you’re able to make visually appealing things (infographics or basic use of Canva), you will be hired someplace! It’s really easy to hire people who have gone above and beyond to develop the skills relevant to their areas of interest. 

Which authors, articles or documentaries had a significant impact on you?

Anything else we didn’t talk about you’d like to mention?

Interviewer: Kimmy VanDeWege, SFSI Coordinator
December 1st, 2024