Marianna Wetherill, PhD, MPH, RDN/LD, DipACLM

(918) 660-3684

Marianna-Wetherill@ou.edu

Dr. Wetherill’s research involves community-based collaborations with food banks, social service organizations, medical clinics, and tribal communities to develop and implement “food is medicine” (FIM) interventions for diverse populations affected by nutrition inequities. As a registered dietitian and population health interventionist with over 20 years’ experience in community-based nutrition, her work examines the influence of nutrition insecurity on personal dimensions of wellbeing, self-care, and health risk behaviors. Her current research includes two NIH-funded FIM research studies that aim to evaluate the impact of trauma-informed, medically-tailored food assistance interventions for people living with HIV and for Indigenous people who are pregnant. The goals of her work are to elucidate the nutritional and non-nutritional risk mechanisms linking nutrition insecurity and various health outcomes and to support the translation of these findings into clinic and community-based FIM programs.

Dr. Wetherill is the lead dietitian for the OU Culinary Medicine Program, program director for the OU Food First Pharmacy, and is a founding course director for three lifestyle medicine classes required for medical and physician assistant students at the OU-TU School of Community Medicine. She additionally collaborates with Hunger Free Oklahoma to provide evaluation and consultation support for the Double Up Oklahoma (DUO) program and its DUO for Health initiative, as well as with the Sunflower Foundation (Kansas) as a lead evaluator and advisor for its Food is Medicine Initiative.  During 2020-2021, she served on the advisory board as a contributor to the Food & Society at the Aspen Institute’s Food is Medicine Research Action Plan.