Skip to Main Content
An official website of the United States government
Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program

Kirsten A. Herrick, PhD, MSc

Program Director
Risk Factor Assessment Branch, Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program

Telephone: 240-276-5734
Email: herrickka@mail.nih.gov

Degrees
  • PhD – Nutrition and Health Science, Emory University
  • MSc – Public Health Nutrition, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  • BA – Biochemistry (major), Psychology (minor), University of Tennessee
Contact for questions about:
  • Dietary assessment
  • Dietary measurement error
  • Automated Self-administered Dietary Assessment Tool (ASA24)
  • Dietary surveillance

Biography

Kirsten Herrick, PhD, MSc, is a program director with the Risk Factor Assessment Branch (RFAB) of the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program (EGRP) in NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS). Her portfolio is on developing, designing, and conducting nutrition research related to dietary methods, dietary instruments, measurement error, dietary surveillance, and nutritional epidemiology.

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. Dr. Herrick also oversees the Diet History Questionnaire, NCI’s publicly available food frequency questionnaire. She also serves as the Project Scientist for the NIH Common Fund’s Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program.

Dr. Herrick’s scientific interests include nutrient intakes and food consumption patterns among infants birth to 24 months, breastfeeding disparities in the U.S. population, iodine nutrition, and ultra-processed food identification and consumption patterns.

Prior to joining EGRP, Dr. Herrick was a nutritional epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In this capacity, she estimated usual intake distributions to assess the nutrition status of U.S. population groups and conducted analyses on dietary behaviors, food and nutrient intake, and nutritional status of infants, children, and women of childbearing age. Dr. Herrick was also involved in reviewing, revising, and developing new questionnaire content for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study (NHANES).

Dr. Herrick completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she managed the Day and Night Lifestyle and Cancer Survival Study.

Select Publications

O'Connor LE, Martinez-Steele E, Wang L, Zhang FF, Herrick KA. Food processing, according to the Nova system, and dietary intake of US infants and toddlers. J Nutr. 2023;153(8):2413-2420.

Herrick KA, Lerman JL, Pannucci TE, et al. Continuity, considerations, and future directions for the Healthy Eating Index-Toddlers-2020 (HEI-Toddlers-2020). J Acad Nutr Diet. 2023;123(9):1298-1306.

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;153(5):1627-1635.

Steele EM, O'Connor LE, Juul F, et al. Identifying and estimating ultraprocessed food intake in the US NHANES according to the Nova classification system of food processing. J Nutr. 2023;153(1):225-241.

Kirkpatrick SI, Guenther PM, Durward C, et al. The accuracy of portion size reporting on self-administered online 24-Hour dietary recalls among women with low incomes. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2022;S2212-2672(22)00175-7.

Kirkpatrick SI, Guenther PM, Subar AF, et al. Using short-term dietary intake data to address research questions related to usual dietary intake among populations and subpopulations: assumptions, statistical techniques, and considerations. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2022;S2212-2672(22)00139-3.

Wang L, Martínez Steele E, Du M, et al. Trends in consumption of ultraprocessed foods among US youths aged 2-19 Years, 1999-2018. JAMA. 2021;326(6):519-530.

Vinyard M, Zimmer M, Herrick KA, Story M, Juan W, Reedy J. Healthy Eating Index-2015 scores vary by types of food outlets in the United States. Nutrients. 2021;13(8):2717.

Herrick KA, Fryar C, Hamner H, Sohyun P, Ogden C. Added sugars intake among U.S. infants and toddlers. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2020;120(1):23-32.

Gahche JJ, Herrick KA, Potischman N, Bailey RL, Ahluwalia N, Dwyer JT. Dietary supplement use among infants and toddlers aged <24 months in the United States, NHANES 2007-2014. J Nutr. 2019;149(2):314-322.

Perrine CG, Herrick KA, Gupta PM, Caldwell KL. Iodine status of pregnant women and women of reproductive age in the United States. Thyroid. 2019;29(1):153-154.

Herrick KA, Rossen LM, Parsons R, Dodd KW. Estimating usual dietary intake from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data using the National Cancer Institute method. Vital Health Stat 2. 2018;(178): 1-63.

Ahluwalia N, Herrick KA, Rossen LM, et al. Usual nutrient intakes of US infants and toddlers generally meet or exceed Dietary Reference Intakes: findings from NHANES 2009-2012. Am J Clin Nutr. 2016;104(4):1167-1174.