Hi, I'm Erin.

Erin Brown is an Environmental Health Manager for the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services. In this role, she maintains professional relationships with water plant managers and serves as a resource for interpreting complex federal regulations. This support helps water systems maintain strict treatment standards to deliver clean and safe drinking water to their customers, thereby protecting public health.

 

Her educational background includes a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from the University of South Carolina. Throughout her undergraduate training, she volunteered for nutrition-focused NIH research studies through the school’s public health department. Erin gained experience following research protocols, developing educational materials, gathering participant feedback, and facilitating group nutrition classes. These opportunities led her to pursue a career in dietetics through the University of New England’s Master of Science in Applied Nutrition, Dietetics Focus.

 

Erin has had incredible hands-on experience in various sectors of professional nutrition and dietetics through her supervised hours. Her rotation with SNAP-Ed at the SC Department of Public Health was a pivotal moment in her training and education because it exposed her to community-based health programs, public school nutrition education, and nutrition policy. These were experiences through which Erin discovered her passion for child nutrition meal programs and policies. She engaged directly with elementary students through a school needs assessment to understand the scope of the nutrition education they receive, and researched USDA meal program regulations behind the scenes. With student feedback and knowledge of the school nutrition regulatory environment, Erin provided recommendations for program improvement that were applied to SNAP-Ed curricula.

 

The capstone semester of Erin's graduate program allowed her to further explore the world of school nutrition and various feeding models. Under program leadership, she developed a Farm to Early Care and Education teaching curriculum for implementation by Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP)-participating childcare centers. Through this project, Erin translated complex nutrition science into easily understood lesson plans for early childcare teachers, including direct dialogue with their intended preschoolers. Furthermore, she assisted in strengthening a collaborative statewide network, including farmers, food hubs, nonprofit organizations, CACFP, and other state agencies, that will help facilitate the implementation and continuous improvement of Farm to ECE in SC.

 

The didactic portion of Erin's capstone semester involved a research proposal in which she investigated the impact of local food procurement on school meal participation rates in community eligibility program (CEP) schools. This required a robust evaluation of the research on locally grown food in school meals, including understanding the challenges of incorporating more locally produced food and determining applicable solutions. Therefore, Erin's research proposal and Farm to ECE curriculum development went hand in hand. It has prepared her to emerge as a registered dietitian with ample knowledge and experience in nutrition policy, school meal programs, and Farm to School principles.

 

Through this graduate training, Erin is uniquely poised to apply what she has learned by stepping into relevant professional positions, including child nutrition programs within government agencies or nonprofit organizations. Moreover, her extensive work interpreting regulatory guidelines, conducting primary and secondary research, and developing nutrition program curricula will enable her to launch new projects wherever she embarks. Her work translating end-user feedback into actualized solutions has empowered her to drive system-level changes to promote public health.