John T. Cook, PhD, MAEd

Former Principal Investigator, Boston Medical Center

Email: john.cook(at)bmc.org

John Cook is a former Children’s HealthWatch Principal Investigator. His research interests include examining the effects of hunger, food security and energy security on children’s health and well-being and ways to increase access to affordable, healthy food. Research in progress is related to effects of food insecurity at its lowest levels of severity, including “marginal food security.” Topics of greatest concern at present are global climate disruption and diminishing fossil-fuel supplies, and their implications for low-income families’ economic viability, for food availability and affordability, and for public health.

Prior to joining Children’s HealthWatch, Dr. Cook was the Research Director at the Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy at Tufts University School of Nutrition Science and Policy. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine.

Dr. Cook received his BA from the University of Alabama in Mathematics and Spanish, and his MAEd from Arizona State University in Educational Psychology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Planning for Developing Areas with concentrations in Demography and Population Studies and Economics.

Areas of Expertise:

Food Security and Hunger
Energy Security
Economics of Food Insecurity
Access to affordable, healthy food
Income and Wealth Inequality
Global Climate Change

Awards:

While at Tufts University, Dr. Cook was Principal Investigator for the Federal Government’s Food Security Measurement Study that developed measures of food security, food insecurity and hunger for the U.S. population. He received the School of Nutrition Science and Policy Dean’s Council award for outstanding faculty members in recognition of his leadership of that research project.