Amy Block Joy

Amy Block Joy is Cooperative Extension Specialist, Emeritus at the University of California, Davis best known for exposing fraudulent activity in a California nutrition education program. She specializes in nutrition and health disparities of diverse populations, nutritional ecology, and ethics.[1] She is an author and advocate for whistleblowers and employee rights.

Career

Block Joy earned a bachelor's degree in Biochemistry and Bacteriology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley in 1979.[2] The following year she was hired as a University of California, Berkeley campus Specialist in Nutrition. She took a sabbatical to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1992. There she developed a proposal to help poor families improve their economic and nutritional well-being, which was subsequently funded by the US Department of Agriculture.[2]

Upon her return to the US, she joined the University of California, Davis faculty in the Department of Nutrition.[2] From 1994, Block Joy was director of the UC Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program, which provided nutrition education to low-income families throughout California. In 2007, Block Joy stepped down as director of the program.[3][4]

She was reassigned to a one-woman department, Nutritional Ecology, exploring topics including nutritional controversy, health impacts on the environment, nutritional policies, and food safety.[4] She also teaches undergraduate courses.

Whistleblower Report

In August 2006, Block Joy filed a whistleblower report over fraudulent activities within the UC Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program. UC Davis reached a settlement with Block Joy over retaliation for whistleblowing, paying her $89,611.[3] An investigation by the university and the US Department of Agriculture verified many of her allegations.[3][5] As a result, the California Department of Social Services withheld $2.3 million in funding from UC Davis and the program's participating counties.[3]

Published work

In 1985, she published "California EFNEP Evaluation Study" at Berkeley. It was the first experimentally-designed study of the effectiveness of nutrition education and discussed in the book New Directions for Evaluation.[6]

In 2006, she published the first cost-benefit analysis to measure cost effectiveness of nutrition education in California. The analysis is discussed in the 2016 version of Community Health Nursing: Caring for the Public's Health.[7][8]

Block Joy has authored three books about her whistleblower experience:

  • Whistleblower (Bay Tree Publishing, ISBN 9780981957753)[9]
  • Retaliation (self-published by CreateSpace, OCLC 880358227)
  • Blowback: The Unintended Consequences of Exposing a Fraud (self-published by CreateSpace, ISBN 978-1542999663)

She began writing books in order to educate future whistleblowers.[5]

She is an associate editor of California Agriculture, a peer reviewed journal.[2] She has also published articles in Compliance and Ethics Professional.[10]

References
  1. "UC Davis Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources."
  2. Berkeley Emeriti Times May 2011
  3. Jones, Dave. "Whistleblower writes memoir about UC Davis case." UC Davis website. January 28, 2011
  4. Georgis, Martha. "Book event to showcase instructor's emotional tell-all." The California Aggie. April 13, 2011
  5. Greenwald, David. "UC Davis Whistleblower Tells Her Story Trying to Help Empower Others Suffering the Same Fate." The Davis Vanguard. February 4, 2011
  6. Brandon, Paul R. New Directions for Evaluation Wiley Periodicals Inc. 2016. Chapter 6.
  7. Community Health Nursing: Caring for the Public's Health. Jones and Bartlett Learning. 2016. ISBN 9781449687151
  8. Block Joy, Amy. "Cost-benefit analysis conducted for nutrition education in California." Archived 2015-10-10 at the Wayback Machine California Agriculture. Vol. 60 No. 4
  9. Stewart, James B. (2015-12-10). "He Was a JPMorgan Chase Whistle-Blower. Then Came the Blowback". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-04-26.
  10. Joy, Amy. "Ethics and 'Breaking Bad': Developing and Practicing Ethical Skills." Compliance and Ethics Professional. May 2014
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