Alcorn and Childress named 2026 Headliner Award Recipients by the Lubbock Association for Women in Communications
When Michelle Alcorn and Allison Childress talk about their work, they keep returning to the same word: gap. The gap between what patients know they should eat and what they can actually put on the table. The gap between nutrition research and the daily lives of people managing diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol all at once.
Closing that gap earned the two faculty members in Texas Tech’s College of Health and Human Sciences the 2026 Headliner Award from the Lubbock Association for Women in Communications, which annually recognizes professionals who have made a significant impact on their industry and community.
From the Clinic to the Kitchen
The idea behind 3 CulinaryMed Docs—the venture Alcorn and Childress co-founded with Shannon Galyean—grew out of daily clinical frustration. Patients were leaving appointments with sound nutrition advice and no idea how to act on it.
“Nutrition recommendations tend to live in silos, but people don’t,” said Childress, a faculty member in the Department of Nutritional Sciences. “They’re managing diabetes and hypertension and high cholesterol all at the same time, and they need solutions that reflect that complexity.”
Their answer is sam™, a platform that delivers medically tailored, personalized meal plans for individuals navigating multiple chronic conditions simultaneously. Alongside it, Culinartistry brings evidence-based nutrition education directly into the community through hands-on cooking experiences. Whether through technology or face-to-face instruction, the goal is the same: make good nutrition practical and sustainable.
Texas Tech as a Launchpad
Texas Tech’s Innovation Hub and Office of Research and Commercialization were critical early partners. A formal assessment identified sam™ as both novel and highly marketable. Innovation Hub competitions helped the team refine their concept and build visibility, while the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program took customer discovery nationwide, confirming the same barriers were surfacing in communities far beyond Lubbock.
“Being in an environment that supports innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration gave us the opportunity to take what we were seeing in practice and turn it into something scalable,” said Alcorn, a faculty member in the Department of Hospitality and Retail Management.
The Lubbock Economic Development Alliance and University Medical Center have also been key partners, connecting the work to the regional innovation ecosystem and providing a real-world clinical setting to test and refine the approach. Undergraduate and graduate students have contributed through theses, dissertations, and research poster presentations, gaining hands-on experience with translational work.
A Story That Resonates
“Most people don’t struggle with knowing that nutrition matters. They struggle with actually doing it,” Childress said. “When something comes along that makes that process simpler, more personalized, and actually doable, people pay attention.”
As healthcare shifts toward more personalized, preventative approaches, nutrition is central but historically hard to operationalize. sam™ and Culinartistry offer a model grounded in research and clinical experience yet delivered in ways that feel practical and human.
For the pair, the Headliner recognition carries particular meaning because it comes from the city where the work is meant to matter most.
“This is where I’ve built my career, where our students are growing into professionals, and where so much of our work is designed to have a direct, local impact,” Alcorn shared. “To be recognized in the same community where we’re actively trying to make a difference—it just feels very full circle.”
What Comes Next
The immediate priority is scaling sam™ so individuals managing chronic conditions can access personalized nutrition support wherever they are. On the research side, the team plans to generate data measuring how culinary medicine interventions improve health outcomes, building the evidence base while shaping real-world implementation.
“This recognition really feels less like a finish line and more like a point of momentum,” Childress said. “The goal is to keep pushing this work forward in a way that is both scalable and personal, so that what we’re creating continues to make a tangible difference in people’s lives while advancing the field.”