Associate Professor
Kinesiology and Community Health and Nutritional Sciences
Center for African Studies
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
Email dgrigs1@illinois.edu
Research Interests
As a social epidemiologist, Dr. Grigsby-Toussaint’s research attempts to elucidate how and why socio-environmental factors influence health. She is particularly interested in examining risk factors (e.g., sleep, diet, physical activity) associated with non-communicable conditions among women and children globally. Recent efforts have included using large population-based data sets such as the Demographic and Health survey to examine the spatial distribution of overweight and obesity among Ugandan women and children, as well as school-based surveys to explore risk factors associated with non-communicable disease risk among Ugandan children. In the US, Dr. Grigsby-Toussaint has developed instruments to evaluate food marketing and promotions targeting youth and families in retail food stores, in addition to exploring the influence of green space access on physical activity and sleep behaviors.
Selected Publications
- Darfour-Oduro SA, Buchner DM, Andrade JE, Grigsby-Toussaint DS. A comparative study of fruit and vegetable consumption and physical activity among adolescents in 49 Low-and-Middle-Income Countries. Sci Rep. 2018 Jan 26;8(1):1623. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-19956-0.
PMID:29374197. - Bayles BR, Brauman KA, Adkins JN, Allan BF, Ellis AM, Goldberg TL, Golden CD, Grigsby-Toussaint DS, Myers SS, Osofsky SA, Ricketts TH, Ristaino JB. Ecosystem Services Connect Environmental Change to Human Health Outcomes. Ecohealth. 2016 Sep;13(3):443-449. Epub 2016 Jun 29. PMID: 27357081.
- Darfour-Oduro, S., Grigsby-Toussaint, D.S. (2015). Behavioral health policies: Do they influence behavioral practices and health outcomes among adolescent girls in low and middle income countries? Annals of Global Health, 81 (1), 108-109.
- Chi, SH, Grigsby-Toussaint, D., Bradford, N., Choi, J. (2013). Can geographically weighted regression improve our contextual understanding of obesity in the US? Findings from the USDA Food Atlas. Applied Geography, 44: 134-142.
- Turi, K.N., Christoph, M.J. and Grigsby-Toussaint, D. (2013). Spatial distribution of underweight, overweight and obesity among women and children: Results from the 2011 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 10: 4967-4981.
- Grigsby-Toussaint, D., Chi, S., Fiese, B.H. (2011). Where they live, how they play: Neighborhood greenness and outdoor physical activity among preschoolers, International Journal of Health Geographics, 10:66.
- Grigsby-Toussaint, D.S., Zenk, S.N., Odoms-Young, A., Ruggiero, L., Moise, I+. (2010). Availability of commonly consumed and culturally-specific fruits and vegetables in African-American and Latino neighborhoods. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 110, 746-752.
- Grigsby-Toussaint, D.S., Lipton, R., Chavez, N., Handler, A., Johnson, T., Kubo, J. (2010). Neighborhood socioeconomic change and diabetes risk: Findings from the Chicago Childhood Diabetes Registry, Diabetes Care, 33, 1065-1068.