Mary Story (she/her/hers), PhD, RD is a Professor of Global Health, and Family Medicine and Community Health. She served as the Director for Academic Programs for the Duke Global Health Institute from January 2010-June 2024. Mary came to Duke in 2014. Prior to that she was a Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and served in leadership positions including Senior Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs at the School from 2011-2013.

Mary is a leading scholar and researcher in the field of child and adolescent nutrition and child obesity prevention. She has published over 500 scientific articles, books and book chapters in this field. She has received numerous national awards for her work and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Since 2005, she has directed the Healthy Eating Research program, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that supports research on policy, systems and environmental strategies to promote healthy eating among children to improve nutrition and prevent childhood obesity.

Dr. Story has devoted her research career to the study of child and adolescent nutrition and childhood obesity prevention. Her research has focused primarily on nutrition and diet-related issues of low-income and minority youth and their families, and environmental and behavioral community-based obesity prevention interventions for youth. 

Dr. Story has conducted several NIH funded school and community-based obesity prevention trials. She was the Principal Investigator on the NIH funded, Pathways study, a multi-site school-based obesity intervention for American Indian youth residing on seven Indian reservations; and the NIH/NHLBI funded phase I multi-site obesity prevention study for African American preadolescent girls, The Girls Health Enrichment Multi-Site Studies (GEMS), which developed, implemented and evaluated an after-school obesity prevention program for African American girls ages 8-10. She was PI on Bright Start, a NIH funded school and family-based obesity prevention randomized community trial study on the Pine Ridge reservation with kindergarten and first grade children. She has been a co-investigator on several NIH grants such as Project EAT a longitudinal study of factors influencing diet and obesity in adolescents and young adults, New Moves an obesity prevention trial with adolescent girls and several environmental interventions to improve healthy eating, including several pricing interventions.