Najjuwah Stephina Walden is a sixth-year PhD candidate in public health sciences and TL1 predoctoral clinical research trainee at WashU School of Medicine. She received bachelor’s degrees in economics and psychology from North Carolina A&T State University and an MSW with a specialization in research from the Brown School at WashU. Trained in behavioral economics and nutritional epidemiology, her research aims to answer the question, “What makes healthy eating expensive?” By evaluating the financial costs and biological consequences associated with healthy eating, her dissertation investigates the personal food environment of Black American postnatal patients, identifies anti-neuroinflammatory dietary habits, and determines how the personal food environment affects the relationship between dietary inflammation and depressive symptom severity.