Research and Teaching Interests

Dr. Blake conducts research on food choice at the nexus where the individual meets the food environment, with a focus on the contextual and cognitive factors that drive food choice behaviors. She has extensive experience conducting mixed-methods research in rural and urban food insecure populations and in multiple countries including the US, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Senegal, and Mexico. Her research program aims to apply learnings from food choice research to improve the design, implementation, and evaluation of policies and programs to achieve healthy sustainable diets in the context of food systems transformation. Her collaborative research program is funded by multiple foundations and federal agencies. Dr. Blake was Principal Investigator of the Drivers of Food Choice Competitive Grants Program funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UK FCDO that facilitated research on the drivers of food choice in Asia and Africa from 2015-2022. Recent research collaborations have focused on synthesis of evidence from the DFC research portfolio to provide deeper insight into drivers of food choice in low- and middle-income countries, methods for assessing food choice behaviors, and articulate priorities for future research and action.