Alexandra (Lexi) L. MacMillan Uribe, Ph.D., R.D.N., is an Assistant Professor of Healthy Living within the Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health through Agriculture, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Dallas, and the Department of Nutrition at Texas A&M University.
Dr. MacMillan Uribe uses community-informed strategies to develop, adapt, and evaluate health promotion programs that address food and nutrition security and reduce chronic diseases in communities at high risk. More specifically, her research aims to evaluate programs and strategies for improving diet- and chronic disease-related outcomes; use community-informed and mixed-methods approaches to inform health promotion programs; understand the role of social factors in diet to inform program development; develop valid and reliable evaluation tools for health promotion programs; and leverage digital technology to deliver health education and information. Exemplifying her work in health promotion program evaluation, she has led a USDA-funded study to test the effectiveness of Produce Rx, a produce prescription program, on blood pressure management among hypertensive adults residing in a low-income community. She is also a Co-Principal Investigator for an NIH NIMHD-funded R01 to test a school-based civic engagement intervention for improving school health environments on individual health outcomes and social and environmental influences.
Dr. MacMillan Uribe is a graduate of the NIH NHLBI-sponsored Summer Institute Program to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research- Cardiovascular Health Related Research (PRIDE-CVD), through which she was awarded funding to explore the influence of community cafes, non-profit pay-what-you-can restaurants, on food and nutrition security and diet quality.