Katie Fiorella

Personal Webite kathrynfiorella.com
Position Postdoctoral Fellow, Atkinson Center for Sustainable Futures
Email Address kf326@cornell.edu
My research aims to understand links among environmental change and human health. I focus on the ways resource access impedes or provides for food, livelihood, and nutrition security, and how human well-being feeds back to affect environmental sustainability. I combine my training as an ecologist and epidemiologist with interdisciplinary methods from economics, political ecology and sociology.

Livelihood, food and nutrition security

I lead a research project that explores the coupled human and natural system of Lake Victoria to address links between environmental change and livelihood, food and nutrition security. I combine community-based ecological monitoring of fish catch and household survey data to analyze how declining fish availability affects local households. Initial results for this project have shown that involvement in fishing does not necessarily contribute to higher food security or fish consumption and explored how fishery management shapes patterns of local fish consumption.

Livelihood shocks, illness, and natural resources

My research also seeks to understand the role of social ills as a response to and cause of environmental change. At a global scale, this work addresses pathways between wildlife decline and social conflict. At a local scale, work around Lake Victoria explores the effects of fishery decline on the transactional fish-for-sex economy and links between fisher illness and fishing practices, particularly their legality and sustainability.

My past work experience at the UN World Food Programme in Kampala, Uganda, and The Food Project in Boston, MA, USA focused on related themes of environmental change, food access, and nutrition. My training includes a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy and Management and Masters of Public Health (Epidemiology) from the University of California, Berkeley, and an A.B. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University.

Published Papers

  • Salmen, C.R., Hickey, M.D., Fiorella, K.J., Omollo, D, et al. 2015. “Wan Kanyakla” (We are together): lived experience and community transformation following a social network intervention to promote engagement with HIV treatment in Western Kenya. Social Science and Medicine. (in press)
  • Fiorella, K.J., Camlin, C.S., Salmen, C.R., Omondi, R. Hickey, M.D., Omollo, D.O., Milner, E.M., Bukusi, E.A., Fernald, L.C.H., Brashares, J.S. 2015. Transactional Fish-for-Sex Relationships Amid Declining Fish Access in Kenya. World Development. 74: 323-332.
  • Hickey, M.D., Salmen, C.R., Omollo, D., Mattah, B., Fiorella, K.J., Geng, E.H. et al. 2014. Pulling the network together: a microclinic social network intervention for promoting engagement in HIV care on Mfangano Island, Kenya. JAIDS. 69(5): 127-34.
  • Nagata, J., Fiorella, K.J., Salmen, C.R., Hickey, M.D., Mattah, B., Magerenge, R., et al. 2014. Around the table: Food insecurity, socio-economic status, and instrumental social support among women living in a rural Kenyan island community. Ecology of Food and Nutrition. 00:1-12.
  • Fiorella, K.J., Hickey, M.D., Salmen, C.R., Nagata, J.M., Mattah, B., Magerenge, R., Cohen, C.R., Bukusi, E.A., Brashares, J.S., Fernald, L.H. 2014. Fishing for Food? Analyzing links between fishing livelihoods and food security around Lake Victoria, Kenya. Food Security. 6(6): 851-860.
  • Withey, L. Seto, K., McCauley, D.J., Fiorella, K.J., Marsh, R.A., Abrahms, B., Nunez, T.A., Golden, C.D., Brashares, J.B. Fauna in decline--response. 2014. Science. 346(6211): 819-820.
  • Brashares, J.B., Abrahms, B., Fiorella, K.J., Golden, C.D., Marsh, R., McCauley, D.J., Nunez, T., Seto, K., Withey, L. 2014. Wildlife Decline and Social Conflict. 2014. Science. 345(6195): 376-378
    Covered by: BBC News, The New Yorker, NPR, The Daily Mail, Scientific American
  • Fiorella, K.J. 2013. Interpersonal relationships in research: balancing reciprocity and emergencies. Journal of Research Practice. 10(2): N1.
  • Fiorella, K.J. 2013. Considering the Complexity in HIV/AIDS and the Environment. American Journal of Public Health. 103(9): e1.
  • Nagata, J.M., Fiorella, K.J., Young, S.L., Otieno, O.D., Ijaa, K, Bukusi, E.A., Cohen, C.R. 2013. Socio-demographic and health associations with body mass index at the time of enrollment to HIV care in Nyanza Province, Kenya. AIDS Care. 25(12): 1491-1498.
  • Bellan, S.E., Fiorella, K.J., Melesse, D.Y., Getz, W.M., Williams, B.G., Dushoff, J. 2013. Extra-Couple HIV Transmission in Sub-Saharan Africa: a mathematical modeling study of survey data. Lancet. 381(9877): 1561-1569.
    Covered by: The Economist, All-Africa, News Medical
  • Cohn A.S., Eitzel, M.V., Fiorella, K.J., Geoghegan, C., Gupta, A.C., Kelley, L.C., Seto, K.L. (authors contributed equally). 2012. Review of ‘Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies: A Primer’ by Gunilla Oberg. Quarterly Review of Biology. 87(3): 247-248.
  • Fiorella, K.J., Gurney, C., Leong, M., Stillinger, T. 2010. Nature's Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture. 34(8): 923-925.
  • Fiorella, K.J., Cameron, A., Sechrest, W., Winfree, R., Kremen, C. Methodological considerations in reserve system selection: a case study of Malagasy Lemurs. 2010. Biological Conservation. 143: 963-973.

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Katie Fiorella