Student Highlight: CHR Alumna Continues Research at University of North Carolina

Cal Poly alumna Charlotte Bullard (B.S., Public Health, ’23) now works as a research assistant with the University of North Carolina studying ways to improve the health behaviors of early childhood educators, a job she said she was able to pursue because the experience she gained working at the Center for Health Research (CHR). During her last year at Cal Poly (2022-2023), Bullard worked in Dr. Alison Ventura’s Healthy Kids Lab at CHR coding videos of mom and baby feeding interactions and designing research surveys.  She said these tasks gave her valuable data analysis skills and prepared her for life beyond graduation.

“My time at Cal Poly prepared me for this role by giving me hands-on research experience. While working with Ventura at the Healthy Kids Lab,” Bullard said. “I also felt well prepared by all the wonderful professors in the Public Health Department and feel confident utilizing the knowledge from my coursework.”

At the University of North Carolina Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Bullard is currently working on a children’s health project aimed at improving the health behaviors of early childhood educators.  She visits North Caroline childcare centers to collect data and work with participants.

The goal of the grant is “to improve early childhood educators' health behaviors in the hopes that it will elicit meaningful change in dietary and physical activity behaviors in the children in their care and the early childcare education environment,” Bullard said.

Bullard was a Frost Research Fellow at Cal Poly during the 2022 Frost Summer Undergraduate Research Program. Her summer experience provided her with an intensive research experience within the Healthy Kids Lab, and she continued on in the lab as a paid undergraduate research assistant during the 2022-2023 academic year.  Bullard said this research experience helped direct her post graduate plans.

“It was a way to continue in the same field of research that I started with at Cal Poly and felt like the perfect fit” Bullard said. “Helping children improve their health is important to me because it can make a huge difference throughout their rest of their lives.”