I am a nutritionist who has worked in global public health nutrition for over 30 years. My research focuses on understanding aetiological factors contributing to maternal and child micronutrient status and poor child growth, the design and evaluation of nutrition interventions and the development of tools for assessing dietary intakes and informing nutrition-related decisions in the context of public health and food systems.
Prior to joining LSHTM I was a lecturer/senior lecturer in the Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. My PhD from the University of Guelph, Canada, focused on the zinc status of children living in rural Malawi and Ghana.
I am currently one of the Departmental Research Degree co-ordinators and have a strong commitment to capacity strengthening of junior researchers, especially those working in low-and-middle income countries.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I teach and supervise students in the MSc Global Health Nutrition, and currently co-supervise or sit on the advisory committees of six PhD /DrPH students. For the Global Health Nutrition MSc programme I co-organise and teach in the Nutrition Programme Planning module and do a 3-hour session on dietary assessment methodology in the Fundamentals of Public Health Nutrition module. I am also the exam board chair.
Research
My current research programme is directed towards innoative tool development and to understanding the complex factors contributing to poor infant and young child growth and micronutrient nutrition and the potential for food-based interventions to improve it.
Together with LSHTM colleagues (Hilary Davies-Kershaw, Sara Strout and Alisa Pries), I am leading the Nutrition Workstream of the UKRI GCRF Action Against Stunting Hub. This 5-year project, in India, Indonesia and Senegal, is following cohorts from the second trimester of pregnancy until infants are 24 months of age to understand factors contributing to poor infant growth and development, as well as low maternal/infant micronutrient status. It includes evaluations of egg interventions, which are nested within the cohort studies in Indonesia (pregnant women) and India (infants from 9 months of age).
Together with a PhD student (Frances Knight) and colleagues in Malawi, Kenya, Mozambique and Indonesia, I am involved in the design and application of a tool that informs decisions related to food selection within public health, agriculture extension or food value chain programmes.
Together with colleagues in Uganda, the UK (NRI, University of Greenwich) and PhD students, I am involved in the development and validation of tools, using automated wearable cameras and interactive voice response (IVR), for the collection of data on dietary food intakes and/or women’s daily activities.
I am also currently involved in the MAPs project (led by Edward Joy at LSHTM), contributing to the development of models for predicting the impacts of intra-household food distribution and/or food fortification on dietary micronutrient adequacy.
Selected Publications
