HPBS Alumna’s Work Evaluating Front-of-Pack Food Labeling Intervention

Lauren Magdaleno, who is a Master of Public Health, Health Promotion & Behavioral Science graduate from SDSU, has published her manuscript titled Evaluation of a Front-of-Pack Food Labeling Intervention on a College Campus in the Journal of American College Health.

Lauren received her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Redlands in 2016, and shortly after accepted a position at a primary care clinic. There, she realized her passion for public health. She decided to pursue a Master of Public Health degree at SDSU and graduated in 2020. Lauren’s manuscript was her final capstone project and although she had not decided on whether she would publish it, an SDSU School of Public Health faculty member advised her to write it as if she was planning to publish her manuscript and she could subsequently decide whether or not she wanted to do that down the road.

Lauren was an intern at the Well Being and Health Promotion Department at SDSU and was looking into some projects where she could conduct a program evaluation. At the time, the Well Being and Health Promotion Department had recently implemented a program where they labelled healthy food items at the Aztec Market stores to encourage students to purchase food items that were more nutrient-dense. Lauren’s objective was to look into the effectiveness of this program. She found that the food-labelling program had a high implementation fidelity, however, only about 42 percent of the students noticed the stickers and 89 percent of students did not purchase food items with the sticker. Lauren states that although seeing the sticker was associated with buying healthier food items, many students did not know what the stickers meant and one of her recommendations in her manuscript was to create a scaled-up campaign in the future to ensure students understand the “Live-Well Aztecs” initiative and to potentially increase the likelihood of purchasing nutrient-dense food items.

Today, Lauren continues to work at the Well Being and Health Promotion Department as a COVID Administrative Analyst and is helping to coordinate quarantine and isolation efforts, supervising graduate student case managers, verifying vaccine records and test results, and ensuring the safety of our campus community. If you are interested in reading Lauren’s manuscript, please click here.