Christine Porter |
| Graduate Student |
| 207 Savage |
| DNS |
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| Email: cp226@cornell.edu |
| View Cornell Contact Info |
Biographical Statement:
In my undergraduate studies I focused on race and gender studies in addition to my biology major. After a brief stint in the Student Conservation Association corps, I went to Fiji with the US Peace Corps. For the first two years I taught science and biology in a rural high school, then moved to the Ministry of Education to develop two biology textbooks and an HIV/AIDS curriculum. Moving to London, I founded the international office of a global research resource and networking firm (www.cos.com) and completed coursework for my masters in education, development and health promotion.
After returning to the US in 2002 I consulted in learning design, communication technologies, and health, including for eCornell and Cornell's Division of Nutritional Sciences. I entered Cornell's Adult and Extension Education PhD program in fall 2005. After completing the education coursework, I transferred to Community Nutrition to develop a more effective blend of public health, health promotion and critical social science perspectives that I feel will help address our most pressing national and international health issues. |
Courses Taught:
I have been a teaching assistant for Public Health Nutrition, Social Science Theories in Nutrition, and Food for Contemporary Living. I have also co-taught a Q-methodology research seminar. |
Current Professional Activities:
In the education and public health nutrition fields, I am working to organize social change that addresses underlying causes of gross inequities, in however small or indirect a way. I am particularly interested in community-based participatory action research (CBPR) and deep democracy approaches to such change, especially food systems change, and in health promotion ethics and values more generally.
In that vein, I am locally involved in the Whole Community Project (WCP) that works to ensure all children in Tompkins County, New York have all the healthy food they need and plenty of opportunities for safe, fun and active play. My efforts in this project include stepping up mobilization for food justice in the County and anti-racism work. |
Current Research Activities:
I believe that our communities' health should largely be defined, created and distributed by citizens. This tasks the public health field with supporting and developing citizen agency in changing social determinants of health for greater equity and total health.
To investigate how deeply democratic approaches to public health are working and to illustrate how they could work, my dissertation researches the example of childhood obesity prevention in three ways. It:
- Examines three community-based prevention projects.
- Maps the range of value stances citizens take on what communities should do to prevent childhood obesity.
- Draws from social theory and the research above to suggest practical and ethical ways forward in public health.
In 2006 I became deeply involved as a citizen, parent and researcher in co-founding a childhood obesity prevention project in my community, Tompkins County, with a community organizer based at our county's Cooperative Extension office and many other community partners. This project is ambitiously called the Whole Community Project (WCP). I have dedicated between two and twenty hours a week to this effort since the founding.
The WCP has increasingly taken food justice and grassroots approaches to organizing for child nutritional health. In collaboration with many people and organizations, activities and successes have included a "food justice think tank" with leaders of our community's civic organizations, a "Gardens4Humanity" initiative aimed to ensure anyone who would like a garden can have one regardless of resources or experience, a "Cooking up Community" initiative to help found cooking cooperatives, two new markets (at Department of Social Services and at Southside Community Center), and improvements in school lunch programs including making it easier for struggling families to enroll in free or reduced lunch and involving parent and students in the programs. |
Selected Publications:
- Porter, Christine, "Be Angry, Not Guilty, about Racism", Ithaca Journal, 7A, 28 Jul 2008
- Porter, C (2007) Ottawa to Bangkok: Changing Health Promotion Discourse, Health Promotion International, 22 (1), 72-79
- Porter, Christine (2004) Networking for Health: Health professionals using email discussion forums for development, Information Development, 20 (2), 117-121
- Porter, Christine, Networking for Health-a r/evolution: Using new ICTs to support health professionals in developing countries, MA dissertation, 2003
- Porter, Christine (1998) AIDS Education Programme: pamphlets, stories and support materials for schools, Suva, Fiji, Ministry of Education
- Porter, Christine (1998) Form Six Biology textbook, Suva, Fiji, Ministry of Education
- Porter, Christine (1997) Form Five Biology textbook, Suva, Fiji, Ministry of Education
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The information on this bio page is taken from the CHE Annual Report. |
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