Ximena Perez Velazco is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Nutrition and Public Health Sciences and the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her work focuses on Food is Medicine interventions, nutrition security, and nutrition policy, with an emphasis on designing, implementing, and evaluating programs that improve access to healthy food and support chronic disease prevention and management.
In her most recent works, Ximena studies produce prescription programs, nutrition security measurement, and the integration of nutrition services into health care, using mixed methods and implementation science to understand how these interventions can be effectively delivered in clinical and community settings. Her research is conducted in partnership with health systems, community organizations, and patients to inform nutrition policy and practice.
Ximena serves as Co-Chair of the Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research and Evaluation Network (NOPREN) Food Security Working Group, where she helps advance national research priorities related to food access and nutrition security. Before joining the University of Tennessee, she earned her PhD in Nutrition from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.
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