Cara Cliburn Allen

I authored my first book as a 6 year-old about my family’s annual green bean “canning.” In my earliest elementary school years, I was child of the concrete jungle that is the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, I spent weekends and summers playing in the dirt on the farm in Oklahoma, sowing seeds, watering plants, and harvesting produce when it was ready to preserve to feed our extended family through the winter. It was rare when we worked the land together that my Papaw did not comment: “You are so lucky! Do you know you go to school with kids who have never seen a fresh vegetable?”. At the time, I interpreted his commentary through the lens of a rural/urban divide rather than a socioeconomic one.

 

My personal challenges navigating college compelled me to pursue a master’s degree and then a PhD in Higher Education at Baylor University. Interested in student access and success, in Spring 2016, through engaging with the emerging scholarship on college student food insecurity I realized the same students who did not have access to fresh produce as kid that my Papaw mentioned, or friends who relied on free and reduced lunches at school, attended college and lost the available social safety net. What follows that realization is almost a decade of research and practice with a focus of increasing access to federal nutrition programs for those who need it. 

 

I currently serve as a research scientist at the Center for Nutrition and Health Impact, where we strengthen public health nutrition initiatives through rigorous research, program evaluation, and collaborative partnerships. I pursue this work in my community as a board member of the 8th Street Urban Farm—an Oklahoma City farm that grows produce to give away to local non-profits and Food as Medicine programs.