Petrona Gregorio-Pascual is a fourth year PhD student in the Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and San Diego State University (SDSU) in the Health Behavior track. She received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and her master’s degree in Experimental Psychology at California State University San Marcos. Her research interests are
focused on rigorous public health research that address health disparities in underrepresented populations. Specifically, her interests in health behavior change theory that promotes the reduction of sugary beverage consumption, a global health problem tied to obesity. At CSU San Marcos she was a RISE*R25 Scholar. Her research was focused on applied evidenced based theories to reduce college student’s sugar-sweetened beverage consumption.
Currently, Petrona works as a graduate researcher on multiple projects including GOALs, and other studies. She is part of the Intervention Methods Group and is designing trainings, workbooks, and protocols that applies intervention mapping framework. Additionally, she is also leading a systematic review focused on how parentings strategies for eating and physical activity scale (PEAS) have been used in observational studies.