Assistant Professor Prof. Margrethe Horlyck-Romanovsky of the Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences has had a stellar year so far. Not only did she win a CUNY Interdisciplinary Research Grant (IRG) Program grant for a community participatory diabetes prevention project, but she has had three manuscripts published in peer-reviewed journals, and one currently in revision after the first rounds of peer review. In addition to these accomplishments, Prof. Horlyck-Romanovsky also celebrated the publication of a clinical nutrition textbook in which she edited three chapters in collaboration with Brooklyn College graduate nutrition students. Despite COVID-19 restrictions on scientific conferences, Prof. Margrethe Horlyck-Romanovsky has had ten conference abstracts accepted and one invited talk on Yumlish Podcast titled “Race, Ethnicity, and Diabetes: Intra – Ethnic Diabetes Disparities.” Prof. Horlyck-Romanovsky’s work is nationally and internally recognized as she contributes to expanding our understanding of how lived experiences contribute to chronic disease risk, particularly among populations of African descent. Her international collaborators include researchers and physicians in Cameroon, Rwanda and South Africa. In the United States, Prof. Horlyck-Romanovsky serves as a special volunteer to the Section of Ethnicity and Health at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health where she completed her postdoctoral fellowship. Within CUNY, Prof. Horlyck-Romanovsky has been a fellow of the Center for Systems and Community Design Fellow since 2018 and was recently invited to become a fellow at the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. In February 2022 she moderated a panel discussion titled Food is Medicine at the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. It must be stated that Prof. Margrethe Horlyck-Romanovsky is a CUNY product. Immigrating to the US with a BS in nutrition, she proceeded to obtain a BA in French Language and Literature, and an MPH in Public Health Nutrition from Hunter College in 2000 and 2006 respectively. She continued her CUNY journey by obtaining her DrPH, a doctorate in Public Health in 2017 from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. During her doctoral studies she taught nutrition and public health courses at Brooklyn College. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health she returned to Brooklyn College. Informed by Brooklyn Colleges students and the health concerns of the communities that surround our campus, Prof. Horlyck-Romanovsky’s work mainly focuses on examining how health disparities manifest among people of African origin. Specifically, she compares type 2 diabetes risk factors between African and Black Caribbean immigrants, and African Americans. The new CUNY Interdisciplinary Research Grant will be used to develop a diabetes prevention program in collaboration with the Black Caribbean communities who are experiencing a disproportionate burden of type 2 diabetes. Dedicated to mentoring and training the next generation of public health nutrition researchers, Prof. Horlyck-Romanovsky currently mentors five graduate nutrition students and two undergraduate pre-med students as they work to accurately characterize the food environments, dietary practices, and chronic disease risk of immigrant communities. Prof. Margrethe Horlyck-Romanovsky has also made contributions to the nation’s public health sector outside of her academic contributions. Between 2001 and 2010, she held positions ranging from intern to director at both FoodChange and Food Bank in New York City where she worked on SNAP-funded nutrition education programs implemented in New York City public schools. Clearly Prof. Margrethe Horlyck-Romanovsky has a strong commitment to promoting public health and reducing health disparities. Congratulations to our very own Prof. Margrethe Horlyck-Romanovsky.
