Cristina Gago, PhD, MPH Hear my name
Assistant Professor
Boston University School of Public Health
Community Health Sciences

PhD, Harvard University
MPH, University of Southern California
BS, University of Southern California

Pronouns: she/her/hers



Dr. Cristina Gago is a health disparities researcher committed to supporting healthful nutrition and closing nutrition disparities among low-income families with young children through equity-centered policy and system interventions. As an Assistant Professor of Community Health Sciences and a Fellow with the Evans Center for Implementation and Improvement Sciences, she applies implementation science principles and behavior change theory to the evaluation of community health, food assistance, and social service interventions, such as those offered by the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Head Start (a federally funded early childhood education program for families with low income). Through her partnership-grounded, translational research practice, Cristina aims to identify actionable opportunities to increase health and social service accessibility and uptake, by improving the quality of intervention implementation.

Before joining the Boston University School of Public Health, Cristina trained as a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Langone's Institute for Excellence in Health Equity, where her research centered around the evaluation of health behavior change programming in the context of a large, Brooklyn-based federally qualified health center. Previously, Cristina earned her PhD at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, where her doctoral work examined key facilitators and barriers caregivers enrolled in Head Start and WIC face in eating healthfully and accessing health promotion resources for young children.

Methods strengths:
- Semi-structured interviews and focus groups analyzed via deductive, inductive, or hybrid thematic analysis
- Multilevel (mixed) models (for clustered samples and longitudinal analyses in SAS 9.4)
- Intervention (program) evaluation
- Implementation science frameworks (selection & application)

Primary content areas:
- Health promotion in early care and education settings
- Federal nutrition programs (e.g., equitable enrollment, retention, and benefit redemption)
- Parenting and child health promotion interventions

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility

I acknowledge that my social positionality, privileges, and biases profoundly shape my perspectives, experiences, and approaches to health equity research. Therefore, I must actively work every day to interrogate and challenge the assumptions I hold, as a means of ensuring that my research is ethical, equitable, and sensitive. In the work I do, I am committed to centering the voices and experiences of marginalized communities, through collaborative and inclusive community-based research approaches. By producing research in equal partnership with community members, leaders, and advocates, I aim to ensure that every research question addresses community-relevant concerns and that, from the subsequent findings, we derive actionable recommendations for positive change.

Further, as a teacher, I recognize that it is my job to urgently and continuously support students in achieving their academic and professional goals in public health by prioritizing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) and working to co-create a learning environment where everyone can thrive. With this goal in mind, I have volunteered time with several initiatives.
• For two of my undergraduate years, I volunteered as a Mini-Course Instructor for the University of Southern California’s Joint Education Project, which is one of the oldest and largest service-learning programs in the United States. In this role, I created weekly one-hour nutrition education lessons for local elementary and middle schools in Los Angeles. My goal in working with these young students was to get them excited about the science, help them make connections between in-classroom learning and daily life, and push them recognize their own academic potential.
• As a postdoctoral fellow, I introduced young aspiring scientists to opportunities in research, as a volunteer with the Letters to a Pre-Scientist Program. Every month, I exchanged snail mail letters with a seventh-grade pen pal. We shared reflections on our paths so far, discussed challenges we’ve faced and how we’ve surmounted them, and shared future dreams and directions. My hope that is these letters may have helped demystify STEM education and career paths, spark curiosity about future careers in STEM, and broaden student awareness of who can become a STEM professional. As a postdoctoral fellow, I also served as a speaker for the NYU Grossman School of Medicine Science & Technology Entry Program (STEP), aimed at promoting and providing access, opportunity, and representation to science education in New York City. During our time together, I shared my research journey with a group of about 40 high school students, and listened carefully as students generously shared their own hopes, dreams, and reactions with me.
• As a junior faculty member, I joined the Designing Antiracism Curricula Fellowship Program to improve my approach to teaching maternal and child health at BUSPH. I also joined the School's DEIJ Committee, representing Community Health Sciences.

Publications listed below are automatically derived from MEDLINE/PubMed and other sources, which might result in incorrect or missing publications. Faculty can login to make corrections and additions.

iCite Website       Copy PMIDs To Clipboard

  1. Thomas O, Gago CM, Egan KA, Sheward R, Burt KG. Evolving food as medicine programs to advance health equity: insights from two decades of practice. Curr Opin Pediatr. 2025 Dec 08. PMID: 41363194; DOI: 10.1097/MOP.0000000000001531;
     
  2. Gago CM, Grafft N, Haines J, Davison KK. Increased Household Responsibility During COVID-19 Is Associated With Higher Current Parenting Responsibility Among Fathers, but Not Mothers. Fam Community Health. 2026 Jan-Mar 01; 49(1):48-54. PMID: 41299827; DOI: 10.1097/FCH.0000000000000442;
     
  3. Zimmer M, Zhan J, Gago C, Fung TT, Leung CW, Kenney EL. Prepandemic National Estimates of Toddler and Child Diet Quality by WIC Participation Status. JAMA Pediatr. 2025 Nov 24. PMID: 41284278; PMCID: PMC12645394; DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.4498;
     
  4. Gago CM, Lee MM, Hammad NM, Wynne JO, Poole MK, Zimmer M, Mozaffarian RS, Colchamiro R, May K, Rimm EB, Kenney EL. "I Didn't Have to Struggle": Caregivers' Perspectives on the Synergistic Interplay of WIC and SNAP on Family Health. Am J Public Health. 2025 Dec; 115(12):1982-1987. PMID: 40998425; PMCID: PMC12614023; DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2025.308259;
     
  5. Macias E, Gago C, Vu J, Figueroa R. Leveraging Head Start and WIC to Address Food Insecurity in Immigrant Mixed-Status Families: A Perspective Paper. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2025 Nov; 57(11):1101-1106. PMID: 40849833; DOI: 10.1016/j.jneb.2025.07.002;
     
  6. Gago CM, Aftosmes-Tobio A, Grafft N, Davison KK. "It Should Be a Priority": Lessons Learned by Head Start Leaders, Staff, and Parent Facilitators Delivering a Multi-Site Parent-Centered Child Obesity Prevention Intervention. Nutrients. 2025 Mar 18; 17(6). PMID: 40292486; PMCID: PMC11944454; DOI: 10.3390/nu17061063;
     
  7. Park IY, Gago C, Grafft N, Lo BK, Davison KK. Parent empowerment as a buffer between perceived stress and parenting self-efficacy in immigrant parents. J Immigr Minor Health. 2025 Apr; 27(2):268-276. PMID: 39663287
     
  8. Grafft N, Gago C, Garcia E, Aftosmes-Tobio A, Jurkowski JM, Blaine RE, Davison KK. Parent Experiences of Empowerment: Understanding the Role of Parent Empowerment in Child Health Promotion. Fam Community Health. 2024 Oct-Dec 01; 47(4):261-274. PMID: 39158172; PMCID: PMC11335312; DOI: 10.1097/FCH.0000000000000412;
     
  9. Gago C, De Leon E, Mandal S, de la Calle F, Garcia M, Colella D, Dapkins I, Schoenthaler A. "Hypertension is such a difficult disease to manage": federally qualified health center staff- and leadership-perceived readiness to implement a technology-facilitated team-based hypertension model. Implement Sci Commun. 2024 May 02; 5(1):49. PMID: 38698497; PMCID: PMC11067286; DOI: 10.1186/s43058-024-00587-8;
     
  10. Wang ML, Gago CM. Shifts in Child Health Behaviors and Obesity After COVID-19. JAMA Pediatr. 2024 May 01; 178(5):427-428.View Related Profiles. PMID: 38436952
     
Showing 10 of 24 results. Show More

This graph shows the total number of publications by year, by first, middle/unknown, or last author.

Bar chart showing 24 publications over 6 distinct years, with a maximum of 9 publications in 2024

YearPublications
20201
20212
20225
20231
20249
20256


4 practical tips for eating more sustainably

The Conversation 8/5/2024

Earth Day 2024: 4 effective strategies to reduce household food waste

The Conversation 4/21/2024

Combating digital redlining is imperative for advancing health equity, say researchers

Medical Xpress 3/21/2024

Budget talks on the table, GOP looks to take food off the table

The Boston Globe 9/12/2023
In addition to these self-described keywords below, a list of MeSH based concepts is available here.

Food Security
Nutrition Assistance
Early Childhood Care & Education
Health Equity
Parenting
Health Behavior Interventions
Implementation Science
Food Insecurity
Childhood ALL
Diet
Nutrition Survey
Social Determinants of Health
Policy, Health
Poverty

Available to Mentor as: (Review Mentor Role Definitions):
  • Advisor
  • Co-Mentor or Peer Mentor
  • Project Mentor
  • Research / Scholarly Mentor
Contact for Mentoring:
  • Email (see 'Contact Info')

801 Massachusetts Ave
Boston MA 02118
Google Map

617.358.1342
Download vCard

Gago's Networks
Click the "See All" links for more information and interactive visualizations
Concepts
See all (65) concept(s)
_
Media Mentions
_
Co-Authors
See all (1) people
_
Similar People
See all (60) people
_
Same Department
Search Department