The Seligman Research Team engages in policy-oriented research on factors impacting the food environment and food affordability, leveraging Dr. Seligman’s roles as Director of the CDC’s Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research and Evaluation Network, Senior Medical Advisor for Feeding America, and partner to the Nutrition Incentive Hub. Since 2015 her team has operated Vouchers 4 Veggies, one of the nation’s largest produce prescription programs, utilizing its well-established infrastructure and proven outcomes to conduct strategic research and provide technical expertise to help advance and grow the field of food is medicine through both research and practice. The Seligman Research Lab has been at the forefront of documenting food and nutrition insecurity as major drivers of poor health and of implementing and evaluating programs and policies to address food insecurity as a mechanism to improve health.
The Seligman Research Lab is housed within UCSF’s Action Research Center (ARC) for Health Equity and Division of General Internal Medicine (DGIM) based at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG). The ARC for Health Equity seeks to develop effective strategies to prevent and treat chronic diseases in communities most at risk, carrying out innovative research dedicated to improving health and reducing disparities through discovery, innovation, policy, advocacy, and community partnerships. DGIM delivers innovative, comprehensive and complex primary medical care to San Francisco’s most at-risk and underserved patients; carries out highly impactful translational research focused on generating new knowledge to improve the health of at-risk populations; engages in meaningful policy work focused on reducing health disparities and ensuring access to care; and trains the next generation of physician leaders and researchers in the care of historically marginalized and underserved populations.
