Courtney Luecking

Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist for Health and Nutrition, University of Kentucky

Dr. Courtney is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist with previous work experiences spanning clinical, community, and research settings. In her role as an Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist for Health and Nutrition, she collaborates with undergraduate and graduate students, Cooperative Extension agents, early childhood community partners across Kentucky, and faculty within the University and other institutions across the country to translate research-based information and healthy lifestyle interventions for communities in Kentucky. Her Cooperative Extension programming and research activities aim to improve population health and health equity in Kentucky through facilitating cross-sector partnerships with Cooperative Extension and development, implementation, and evaluation of multi-level interventions that elevate the quality of nutrition and feeding environments during the early childhood period. During her time as a graduate research assistant with the Children’s Healthy Weight Research Group, Courtney worked on the Healthy Me, Healthy We project. She led a systematic review on use of social marketing for improving dietary intake and physical activity in early care and education settings, contributed to development of social marketing campaign, supported recruitment of research participants, and developed and supervised the dietary assessment and reporting protocols for over 900 preschool-aged children at both early care and education centers and home. Courtney continues to work with the Children’s Healthy Weight Research Group as a Co-Investigator on a NIH-funded randomized controlled trial with a type 3 hybrid-effectiveness design to evaluate the impact of Go NAPSACC on child care centers’ practices as well as the reach, adoption, implementation, and maintenance achieved with Go NAPSACC when using basic vs. enhanced implementation strategies. She also works with the Kentucky Department of Public Health to support implementation of Go NAPSACC statewide in Kentucky through support from a CDC State Physical Activity and Nutrition grant.