Samina Raja, Ph.D., associate professor of urban and regional planning in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, is a community-based scholar whose work continues to earn national visibility and prestige in the fields of food security planning and community health.
She is the only urban or regional planner appointed to a committee of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) that has been charged with developing a framework and guidance for health impact assessments (HIAs) in the United States, and she recently received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to build on her prior research on community food systems in Buffalo.
The assessment effort is part of a larger community partnership to assess and modify healthy eating and active living policies in the City of Buffalo led by the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Inc.
A civil engineer and urban planner, Raja’s community-grounded research focuses on planning and design for healthy communities, the fiscal dimensions of planning and the influence of the food and built environments on obesity and physical activity.
