Jean Kerver, PhD

Jean Kerver, PhD, MSc, RD, is a nutritional and perinatal epidemiologist whose research focuses on maternal and child health, health disparities, and community-based approaches to improving nutrition and health. Her research integrates observational epidemiology with the development and evaluation of behavioral and nutrition interventions, particularly among pregnant women, children, families, rural communities, and populations experiencing health disparities.Dr. Kerver has expertise in nutritional epidemiology, pregnancy and early-life exposures, food insecurity and food access, obesity prevention, breastfeeding, and rural maternal and child health. Her intervention research includes randomized and cluster-randomized trials, multilevel interventions, Food as Medicine and fruit and vegetable prescription programs, and programs delivered through schools, early-childhood settings, homes, community organizations, and other non-clinical settings.She currently serves as Contact Principal Investigator of a large, multi-institutional study funded by the NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program that follows Michigan families from pregnancy through childhood. Her broader research program seeks to identify modifiable influences on maternal and child health and translate epidemiologic findings into effective interventions at the individual, family, community, and population levels. 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Wang VA, et al., including Kerver JM. Residing in a low-income-low-food-access neighbourhood and asthma in early and middle childhood in ECHO: a multisite cohort study. BMJ Open. 2025;15(6).
• Elliott MR, Kerver JM, Drew A, et al. Obtaining a probability sample of a pregnancy cohort of births: a review of the problem and a practical solution. American Journal of Epidemiology. 2025;194(9):2532-2539.
• Melough MM, McGrath M, Palmore M, Collett BR, Kerver JM, et al.; ECHO Cohort Consortium. Gestational vitamin D concentration and child cognitive development: a longitudinal cohort study in ECHO. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2025;122(2):571-581.
• Ling J, Suriyawong W, Robbins LB, Zhang N, Kerver JM. FirstStep2Health: cluster randomized trial among low-income preschoolers. Pediatric Obesity. 2024;19(7).
• Aris IM, et al., including Kerver JM. Birth outcomes in relation to neighborhood food access and individual food insecurity during pregnancy in the ECHO-wide cohort. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2024;119(5):1216-1226.
• Shipp GM, et al., including Kerver JM; ECHO collaborators. Maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, breastfeeding, and child BMI. Pediatrics. 2024;153(1).
• Kerver JM, et al. Supporting family meal frequency: Screening Phase results from the Simply Dinner Study. Appetite. 2022;174:106009.
• Shipp GM, Weatherspoon LJ, Comstock SS, Alexander GL, Gardiner JC, Kerver JM. Perceived social support for breastfeeding among African American women: Mama Bear feasibility trial. American Journal of Health Promotion. 2022.
• Kerver JM, Pearce EN, Ma T, Gentchev M, Elliott MR, Paneth N. Prevalence of inadequate and excessive iodine intake in a US pregnancy cohort. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. 2021;224(1):82.e1-82.e8.
• McNabb WL, Quinn MT, Kerver JM, Cook S, Karrison T. The PATHWAYS church-based weight loss program for urban African-American women at risk for diabetes. Diabetes Care. 1997;20(10):1518-1523.