Faculty Collective-Theresa White
Dr. Theresa White’s research focuses on working to reduce health inequities for minority populations, with special emphasis placed on helping to mitigate the national obesity epidemic in the United States. More specifically, she has developed several community-based psychosocial programs for African American and Latino adolescent and tween girls. Her most recent project is entitled Developing Media Savvy Adolescent Consumers in the Fight Against Childhood Obesity, for which she received the prestigious NIH (RIMI) Tiered Mentor Scholar Award. Commonly referred to as the M.I.S.S. (Media Inspired Savvy Sisters) program, it is an after-school psychosocial, nutritional, media intervention for at-risk African American tween (8-11) females at the Challengers Boys and Girls Club in Los Angeles. The project emphasizes a health-centered, rather than a weight-centered strategy that focuses on the whole person. It aims to empower girls, while placing emphasis on eating in normal and healthful ways, developing increased levels of self-esteem and media/advertising literacy. The project also examines the effects of food marketing on children, focusing on how they respond to, and perceive commercials embedded in the online environment of selected videogames, media platforms and outdoor advertising. She recently presented this research in March 2013 at the Health, Wellness and Society International Conference, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A short documentary on this project is forthcoming.
She has also collaborated with the International Culinary School at The Art Institute (AI) in North Hollywood and the North Hollywood Recreation Center, where she created the I Heal (Inspiring Healthy Eating and Active Lifestyles) program. The community-based intervention for at-risk and overweight African American and Hispanic adolescent females (ages 10 to 14) consists of nutrition education, healthy eating behavior, cooking instructions/food etiquette and a physical activity/exercise program, based on culturally relevant yoga (includes the use of soul and Latin music) and hip-hop hula hoop.
Dr. White has been invited to three Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) events, including the Annual Research and Coaching Clinic and the 5th and 6th New Connections: Increasing Diversity of RWJF Programming Annual Symposiums. She has co-authored several publications with members of the RIMI community, including a chapter on “Economic coping and head of households’ perception of family health,” and “Exploring Sexual Health Among Older African American Women.”
She is a documentary filmmaker, who produces and directs educational non-fiction films that promote critical media literacy, and that offer narratives and perspectives from marginalized groups. She is in the post production phase of several projects, one of which focuses on globalization, self-esteem, self-image and female empowerment; the other on Black masculinity and manhood in America.
See www.csun.edu/~trw93165 for additional information.