Hello!  I am Dr. Ann Gaba, Director of the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy Nutrition and Dietetics Internship.

I have worn many hats in my 20+ years in nutrition. My BS degree was in community nutrition at Cornell’s College of Human Ecology. After graduation, I worked as the food-service manager of a 58-bed nursing home. At the same time I earned a Master’s degree in Health Education at Russell Sage College. I moved down to New York City to pursue a doctoral degree in Nutrition Education at Teachers College, Columbia.  While doing coursework at TC, I did my RD qualifying experience at St. Luke’s Hospital.

My first professional job was as a clinical dietitian at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. Initially I was assigned to the general medicine ward service,  where I worked for about 2 years before moving on to cardiology and cardiac transplant. After 8 years in cardiology, I wanted a new challenge, so I switched to oncology, and worked in that area for another 8 years. Through most of my years at CPMC, I was also the consultant nutritionist at the Huntington’s Disease Center of Excellence in the New York State Psychiatric Institute. There, and at St. Luke’s Obesity Research Center, I conducted my dissertation research using 24-h indirect calorimetry to assess the energy needs of people with early stage HD. The results of this study were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. I have been a speaker in webinars for the Huntington’s Disease Society of American, the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, and 1199. I have twice been a speaker at the AND FNCE, and twice received the AND Foundation’s Gemple award for research on nutrition and neurological disorders. I have also written 3 chapters of the AND Nutrition Care Manual – all on neurological disorders.

As a second-career academic, I joined the CUNY faculty at Hunter college in 2008. I taught MNT and directed the Dietetic Internship there for 8 years. In 2016, I transferred to the new CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, and became the founding director of this new Dietetic Internship. It was designed to build upon the strengths of the School, with an emphasis on Public Health Nutrition.

In 2022 I was recognized by NDEP as an Outstanding Dietetics Educator.

My research interests include nutrition education methods, experiential teaching and learning, diet and nutrition impacts on chronic diseases, and nutritional factors in the prevention and care of movement disorders.

I have been a member of my local Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) group since 2011, and I love to cook! I frequently travel internationally, collect cookbooks from where I’ve been, and try to replicate my favorite new foods when I get home.

The best way to contact me is by e-mail to: Ann.Gaba@sph.cuny.edu

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