Rate My Professor Natalie Kruzliakova

Natalie Kruzliakova serves as Associate Teaching Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics and Program Director of the Dietetic Internship in the Department of Nutrition and Health Science at Ball State University, a position she has held since her promotion from Assistant Professor, whom she joined in August 2019. Prior to Ball State, she served as Adjunct Professor in Health Sciences at Jefferson College of Health Sciences from August 2018 to May 2019. From 2013 to 2018, she worked as Graduate Teaching Assistant and Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise at Virginia Tech. Kruzliakova earned her PhD in Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise, with a concentration in Behavioral and Community Science, from Virginia Tech in May 2018; her dissertation examined the role of individual and organizational health literacy on health behaviors and health outcomes. She also completed a Dietetic Internship through Virginia Tech's Individualized Supervised Practice Pathway in December 2018 and received her BS in Psychology from Virginia Tech in May 2013.

Her expertise lies in health literacy, nutrition counseling, and medical nutrition therapy. Research specializations include decreasing the effects of low health literacy, improving organizational health literacy, quality improvement in healthcare, health literacy competencies for health professions students, nutrition education, community-based participatory research among health disparate populations, and dissemination and implementation of nutrition-related behavior change interventions. Kruzliakova has authored 12 peer-reviewed research manuscripts, including Kružliaková N, Estabrooks P, You W, Hedrick V, Porter K, Kiernan M, Zoellner J. The relationship between the Stanford Leisure Time Exercise Questionnaire and the Godin Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire among rural intervention participants of varying health literacy status. Journal of Physical Activity and Health. 2018;15(4):269-278; and Porter K, Alexander R, Kružliaková N, Perzynski K, Zoellner J. Using the Clear Communication Index to Improve Materials for Behavioral Intervention. Health Communication. 2018:1-7. She contributed to NIH-funded grants as a graduate research assistant at Virginia Tech, such as SIPsmartER: A nutrition literacy approach to reducing sugar-sweetened beverages (R01 CA154364-01). At Ball State University, she has been awarded external grants from the Indiana Minority Health Coalition, Indiana State Department of Health, and Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. She has taught courses including Medical Nutrition Therapy 1 and 2, and Health Counseling, and presented at Society of Behavioral Medicine annual meetings on topics like organizational health literacy.