Partner Feature: Dr. Christine Fu

Partner Feature:

Dr. Christine Fu

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Pictured above: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Program Officer Dr. Christine Fu.

Dr. Christine Fu earned her Bachelor of Science in international political economy at Georgetown University and doctorate degree in social and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2011. Through working at international nonprofit organizations, the U.S. government and philanthropies, Dr. Fu has been able to expand her understanding of what creating sustainable, systemic change looks like and identify action-focused steps to inform public health policy. Prior to joining the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in 2021, Dr. Fu served as a Senior Program Assessment and Analysis Officer at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Switzerland where she spearheaded the development of the UNHCR’s global Results Framework as well as the UN's Situational Analysis Framework that underpinned the UN Office at Geneva’s multi-year strategies. She has also served as a Senior Research and Evaluation Advisor for the Office of HIV/AIDS in the Bureau for Global Health, USAID in Washington, D.C., where she oversaw global- and country-level research and evaluation related to orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). 

Today, Dr. Fu is a Senior Program Officer at RWJF, the largest public health philanthropy in the U.S. Dedicated to building a “Culture of Health that provides everyone in America a fair and just opportunity for health and wellbeing,” RWJF creates grants and grant programs that support innovative approaches, center equity, diversity and inclusion, and advance public health policies which improve access, opportunity and health outcomes across the country. 

How have you worked with the Center for Nutrition and Health Impact (formerly the Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition) and Dr. Amy Yaroch?

The Center is our Evaluation and Learning Partner, supporting the planning for RWJF’s New Jersey Food Security Initiative (NJFSI) that will launch later this year in partnership with the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC). Dr. Yaroch and the Center team have played a tremendous role in strengthening how RWJF applies an equity lens throughout the planning process. Through the Center’s persistent efforts, we have had greater connection to and involvement of community-based groups and community constituents with lived experience of food insecurity involved in the planning process. Dr. Yaroch and Center colleagues also supported the team in developing a theory of change for NJFSI that strengthened our vision of centering equity as a central tenet in our work. Lastly, the Center team is helping us develop a more equitable approach to evaluation, co-designing the evaluation questions and approach with partners, government agencies, community groups and constituents. This discovery process is yielding rich learning that, together, the Center and I plan to share with the broader philanthropy community through a publication and other strategic communication. It has been such a pleasure working with Dr. Yaroch, Dr. Calloway and the great team at the Center. 

Over the course of your career, you’ve conducted research and evaluation in refugee health and wellbeing, HIV/AIDS prevention interventions among orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), maternal and child health, and more. How have you used your experience in humanitarianism, public health and psychosocial health to advance health equity, nutrition security and public health policy in your current work at RWJF? 

My previous experiences working at international NGOs, in U.S. government and at the UN have helped me form an expansive view and understanding of what it takes for sustainable, systemic change to occur at community, national and global levels. Addressing issues like health equity, nutrition security and public health policy in any context is challenging. In countries experiencing ongoing conflict and/or natural disasters where neighboring countries host people who have been forcibly displaced, these issues become politically fraught and tenuous. Political and economic systems are fragile or have collapsed. After working along a spectrum of diverse contexts and situations, this has afforded me a rich catalog of the possible interventions, policy options and approaches to draw from in my projects at RWJF.    

I’ve also gained insight into how complex institutions and systems function, interrelate and evolve. My role within these different entities and sectors has always been to help these institutions interpret and make sense of how the environment or system they are trying to affect is responding (or not) to the interventions/policies they enacted. I have learned that spurring organizational change at any level requires changing hearts and minds. Over time, I learned to shed evaluation orthodoxies and, instead, invite my peers, senior leaders, partners, anyone and everyone into the research and evaluation process. Facilitating a shared learning journey has proven to be effective in service to organizational learning. 

Having lived in Asia and Europe, and having worked on international development and humanitarian initiatives in over fifty countries, how do you feel the U.S. public health system and nutrition security compare internationally? 

Having most recently lived in Europe, what stands out to me the most is that the quality of the food is much better and the cost of healthy food is lower as compared to the U.S. Governments in Europe incentivize their constituents to eat healthy and lead an active lifestyle through a robust public transport system, whereas in the U.S., eating organic and having access to fresh produce is expensive and oftentimes inaccessible. While living like that is viewed as elitist in the U.S., Europeans have a shared expectation that everyone has the right to organic, healthy food. Most governments in Europe regulate food production and there are strict standards to ensure the nutritious value of food. I was also impressed with how local the produce was—food chains prioritize proximity to food sources. Each neighborhood community had its own grocery store that was within a five- to ten-minute walking distance. I always walked to my local grocery store that was a two-minute walk from my house. While they were smaller than U.S. supermarkets, they carried fresh produce and all the essentials a family would need. We have a lot of food in the U.S., however, very little of it offers nutritious value. The more nutritious the food, the more expensive it is. The U.S. also has a lot of fast-food and restaurant options where the food is overly salty and fatty. In Asia and Europe, the restaurant and casual eating options are generally healthier. They use more fresh produce, fewer processed food ingredients and less salt and sugar. High fructose corn syrup, for example, is not an ingredient present in food items outside the U.S. 

Additionally, the public health system differs greatly in Asia and Europe to the U.S. Most of these countries have a strong, centralized system where healthcare is mostly managed by the government. While there are private healthcare providers, the government provided universal healthcare and managed health insurance where I lived outside the U.S. I came to observe that the U.S. has a more “medicalized” culture than these other countries. My European doctors never gave me orders for additional screenings and tests when I visited as a sick patient. I gave very limited blood samples during annual physicals. The focus was on how the healthcare system could best support my high quality of life and well-being and be the least intrusive/burdensome on the patient. They even asked me about my mental health and offered resources for my mental well-being. Best of all, they did not make me repeat the same tests every year and followed medical guideline recommendations. I felt less anxious visiting doctors because it was a more relaxed experience that did not involve being overly examined. The healthcare system in Europe did not operate out of fear of litigation that I view is the driving motivation for healthcare practice in the U.S.

What I found incredibly interesting was the difference in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. When I lived in Europe during COVID-19, I observed that citizens had strong collectivist attitudes. They cooperated with government guidelines of wearing masks indoors, contact tracing and staying home during lockdowns. I don’t think this level of sustained cooperation would have been possible in the U.S. In a general sense, the quality of care that I have experienced in both Europe and the U.S. is very high compared to other places in the world. Their public health systems are robust and, for the most part, able to respond to public health emergencies. 

RWJF’s mission is to build a “Culture of Health” in the U.S. Explain to us what this means to you and the difference you intend to make in the field.

To me, this means that the cultural norm in our country centers the health and well-being of its people—all the people that reside in the U.S. This permeates into how our society is structured; how our national budget is used; how public and private institutions operate; the rights and entitlements people are afforded by the government and their employers; how our communities and infrastructure is designed and built; how our economy works. All of that is in service to promoting the health and well-being of all people living in the U.S. To achieve this vision, we must dismantle the structural racism that exists all around us and change our own ways of being and working to actualize this. Together with my colleagues in the Research, Evaluation and Learning (REL) department at RWJF, I intend to dismantle and transform the closed health sciences knowledge system which has drawn from knowledge rooted in structural and historical racism, and created power imbalances that perpetuate the marginalization of communities of color and groups with intersecting identities. I will work to expand the knowledge generation beyond the academy, and I welcome Indigenous knowledge holders and those with lived experience. Lastly, I intend to support RWJF’s efforts to transform systems to advance a “Culture of Health” through research and evaluation. 

Do you have any food rituals, habits or philosophies for your personal life that you would like to share?

Everything in moderation! Take a vacation at least once a year. Get out and explore the natural environment!