About Gina S. Siapco, DrPH
A graduate of the doctoral program at LLU School of Public Health Department of Nutrition, Dr. Gina Segovia-Siapco has returned to the department in April 2009 and is currently serving as associate professor. She earned her Master of Public Health degree from the Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies (AIIAS) in Cavite, Philippines. In 2000, she came to Loma Linda University for her doctoral studies and received the Chancellor's Award at her graduation in 2004. After a three-month postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Nutrition, she returned to her native country, Philippines, to resume her teaching position at AIIAS where she served as chair of the Department of Public Health at the School of Graduate Studies from 2006 to 2009. Aside from teaching nutrition and public health courses and mentoring thesis and dissertation students, Dr. Siapco was associate editor of the school's multidisciplinary research journal and often served as a resource person for nutrition conferences both locally and in several countries under the Southern Asia-Pacific Division of Seventh-day Adventists.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
Dr. Siapco was involved in research projects during her doctoral studies which allowed her to focus on validating food frequency questionnaires to assess food and nutrient intake. She has presented at a number of international nutrition conferences and published several abstracts and peer-reviewed articles in leading nutrition journals. Aside from teaching, she is an investigator in several externally funded research projects foremost of which was the Teen Food and Development Study (TeenFADS), a cross-sectional study that investigates the relationship between dietary/lifestyle habits of adolescents and their growth and development, specifically the relationships between habitual soy intake and onset of puberty. Other research projects she is involved in are the Microbiome Study and the innovation of the new survey questionnaire of the Adventist Health Study 2 (AHS-2), the short-term Full Plate Diet trial, and the Healthy Avocado Trial, a multi-site randomized clinical trial investigating the impact of daily avocado intake on energy balance and metabolism, where she serves as one of the dietary assessment managers. Dr. Siapco also collaborates with researchers from the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra (SUN) Study on their secondary data research involving dietary patterns, health, environmental impact, and sustainability outcomes.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Dr. Siapco’s research interests include designing, developing, and validating innovative dietary assessment tools and indexes; children/adolescent's dietary and lifestyle habits and their associations with growth, development, and health; dietary patterns and their health and environmental impact and sustainability; and, the associations between the gut microbiota and health. She teaches nutrition and research courses including Topics in Global Nutrition, Research Applications in Nutrition, Maternal and Child Nutrition, Doctoral Seminar in Nutrition, Scientist Forum, and Public Health Nutrition & Biology. She also guest lectures for Nutritional Epidemiology and global health courses. Dr. Siapco is a member of the American Society of Nutrition, American Public Health Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health.