Kirsten A. Herrick, PhD, MSc, is a Program Director in the Health Behaviors Research Branch (HBRB), of the Behavioral Research Program (BRP), in NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS). In this capacity, she leads a portfolio focused on the role of nutrition, alcohol use, obesity, and contextual measures from cancer prevention through survivorship. Her portfolio leverages innovative measurement methods and analytic approaches, including AI-enabled dietary assessment, biomarkers, mobile tools, wearables, to improve the rigor and reach of cancer-related behavioral research.
Her research interests include dietary surveillance; nutritional epidemiology; usual intake methodology and measurement error; food consumption patterns, particularly among infants birth to 24 months; dietary assessment, with a special interest in iodine; and measurement of and describing consumption patterns related to food processing and food formulation.
Dr. Herrick oversees the web-based Automated, Self-Administered 24-Hour Dietary Assessment Tool (ASA24), a freely available web-based tool that enables multiple, automatically coded, self-administered 24-hour recalls and/or single or multi-day food records. She also oversees the Diet History Questionnaire, NCI’s publicly available food frequency questionnaire, and serves as the Project Scientist for the NIH Common Fund’s Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program.
Prior to joining NCI, Dr. Herrick served as a nutritional epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In this role, she analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study (NHANES) to assess the dietary intake and nutritional status of U.S. population groups and describe associations between diet and health. Dr. Herrick received her Ph.D. in Nutrition Health Sciences from Emory University, a M.Sc. in Maternal and Child Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in the UK, and a B.A. in the College Scholars Program with a concentration in biochemistry and psychology from the University of Tennessee.
Scientific Interests
- Nutritional epidemiology
- Dietary assessment and tool development
- Measurement error and usual intake methodology
- Food processing and food formulation
- Meal Timing
Selected Publications and Presentations
- Bremer AA, Adas S, Brown AGM, Casavale KO, Hermansky S, Herrick K, Kavanaugh CJ, Nicastro HL, Schully SD, Reedy J, Vargas AJ, Zanetti KA, McKinnon RA. NIH-FDA Nutrition Regulatory Science Workshop: Advancing Research and Policy. Am J Clin Nutr. 2026 Mar 10:101267. doi: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2026.101267.
- Abar L, Steele EM, Lee SK, Kahle L, Moore SC, Watts E, O'Connell CP, Matthews CE, Herrick KA, Hall KD, O'Connor LE, Freedman ND, Sinha R, Hong HG, Loftfield E. Identification and validation of poly-metabolite scores for diets high in ultra-processed food: An observational study and post-hoc randomized controlled crossover-feeding trial. PLoS Med. 2025 May 20;22(5):e1004560. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004560.
- Steele EM, O'Connor LE, Juul F, Khandpur N, Galastri Baraldi L, Monteiro CA, Parekh N, Herrick KA. Identifying and Estimating Ultraprocessed Food Intake in the US NHANES According to the Nova Classification System of Food Processing. J Nutr. 2023 Jan;153(1):225-241. doi: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2022.09.001.
- Evans ME, Herrick KA, Regan KS, Shams-White MM, Vargas AJ, Reedy J. A Decade of Dietary Assessment Methodology Research at the National Institutes of Health, 2012-2021. J Nutr. 2023 May;153(5):1627-1635. doi: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2023.02.030.
- Herrick KA, Lerman JL, Pannucci TE, Zimmer M, Shams-White MM, Mathieu KM, Stoody EE, Reedy J. Continuity, Considerations, and Future Directions for the Healthy Eating Index-Toddlers-2020. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2023 Sep;123(9):1298-1306. doi: 10.1016/j.jand.2023.05.012.