Home

Welcome to the Dr. Roni Neff & Team Website!

Our research, policy and education initiatives are dedicated to driving meaningful change at the intersection of food systems, environmental sustainability, and public health. Specializing in food waste reduction, food rescue, food system resilience, and advancing a fairer food system, our team works to address some of the most pressing challenges facing food systems today.

We are based in the Department of Environmental Health & Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where Roni serves as a Professor; and at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, where she is a Senior Advisor.

Check out our work!

PEOPLE
PROJECTS
PUBLICATIONS
TEACHING
PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS

Updates & Announcements

FOOD SYSTEMS TEXTBOOK

Stay tuned: Work is underway on the 2nd edition of the Introduction to US Food Systems textbook! This time with co-editors Dr. Jennifer Otten and Dr. Angela Odoms-Young and the Center for a Livable Future!

FOOD SYSTEM RESILIENCE

What can local governments do to protect food security in the face of disasters? The Food System Resilience Planning Guide provides guidance and tools to support governments in their planning. We developed it with a Community of Practice with five cities. Read more here and see examples of implementation and related articles and podcasts.

We also created a comprehensive database of hundreds of indicators that have been used to characterize food system resilience across numerous projects. Indicators are categorized by sector, role in food system functioning, resilience attributes, and data types.

And the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials just released a companion version for state-level planners! (Feb 2026)

RECENT PUBLICATIONS – Peer Reviewed

  • Moore ERH, Moran AA, Stadler L, Solomon E, Angell SY, Neff RA. 2026. NYC’s Food Procurement and Service Policy Associated with a Substantial Reduction in Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Health Affairs. In press.
  • Koutsopoulos MT, Luna-Reyes LF, Bozlak CT, Neff R, Mu T, Romeiko XX, Guo Z, Hosler AS, Pettigrew SM, Pernicka N, Crasto-Donnelly P, Klein A, Feingold BJ. 2026. Sustainable recovery from shocks: Policies and partnerships for fresh produce rescue and environmental impact reduction. Foods. 15(3), 582. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods15030582
  • Edwards DM, Ondish P, Neff R. 2025. Increasing meatless options to decrease meat consumption – a quantitative analysis of the relationship between the percentage of meatless items offered on a specials menu and meatless purchases. Food Quality & Preference. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2025.105763
  • Moore ERH, Burke M, Biehl E, Neff RA. 2025. Planning for food system disruptions: lessons learned about resilience attributes from local governments’ emergency food response efforts. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. V.9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2025.1563045
  • Harper K, Espat S, Davis L, Labruto N, Neff R. 2025. Methods for Using Worker-Centered Research to Improve Food Donation and Reduce Wasted Food in a Grocery Retail Setting. Frontiers in Public Health – Public Health Education and Promotion. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1609717

RECENT PUBLICATIONS – reports

  • Neff R, Blondin S, Roe B. Foundations for a National Campaign to Prevent Wasted Food: A Review of Audience Segmentation, Behaviors and Interventions. Report for WRAP and the World Wildlife Fund. 2026.
  • WRAP and Peacock E, Waring L, Forbes H, Palmer G, Santoukos I, McCluskey E, Quested T, Neff R.  Systemic Drivers of Food Loss and Waste in the United States. 2025, Banbury.
  • Neff RA, Broad-Leib E, Khan A, Gunders D. Consumer Perceptions of Food Date Labels. Harvard Food Law & Policy Clinic, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and ReFED. 2025.
  • Harper, K., Espat, S., Davis, L., Labruto, N., Neff, R., Kerr, J., Alarcón Marin, E., Khanani, Y., Baluca, A., Weston, A., Dinesh, D. (2024). Fresh Rescue Champions Project Final Report. Multiscale RECIPES for Sustainable Food Systems. doi: 10.57912/26662741