Members' Profiles S - Z
I grew up in Casablanca, Morocco where I got a mathematics high school degree in 1974. I then entered the Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine in Rabat, where I obtained a bachelor's degree in food technology engineering.
As I was not interested in working for the food industry and wanted a job involving contact with people, I was offered a position of teaching assistant in the department of human nutrition at the same institute. This enabled me to work with the people, especially with the rural population.
During the first years of my work, I took part in an international course on food science and nutrition in Ghent, Belgium. The central theme of this six-month intensive course was nutrition planning. This was my first real encounter with nutrition and I was overwhelmed by what I learnt about successes and failures in Africa, and Central and South America.
Among the teachers in the course, I was most impressed by Ivan Beghin, then professor at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. Returning home, I took part in various research projects among which the 'Ounayn project', a socio-economic study of a remote area of the High Atlas mountains. I conducted a food consumption survey and learnt much about traditional food preparation and the difficulties related to dietary assessment in special settings – including people eating from the same plate. The leader of this research project was Paul Pascon, a leading professor and researcher in rural sociology in Morocco. I learnt much from him and he contributed to shaping my understanding of human nutrition in its strong relationship to sociology, economy and other non-laboratory related fields.
My early interests in studying human nutrition in general and socio-economic aspects of nutrition in particular has arisen from a life-long conviction of the essential importance of human rights in their global sense. In other words, the right to good nutrition and good health is an integral part of human rights. Seen like this, the integration of nutrition and public health is the only way to make the scientific advancements in food and nutritional sciences available and in the service of the population.
It is the right of the people fully to benefit from the scientific findings of research in food, nutrition, health and all related fields. This is only because these researches have been financed through peoples' funds (public and private alike) but also because if they are not useful to enhancing the population well-being, they are useless.
My view entails also integration of the environmental considerations into the public health nutrition advocacy. More often than not, what's detrimental to health and nutrition is detrimental to the environment. An example I often use in my advocacy is that of 'sugar added sodas' (cola drinks). Their consumption is detrimental to health (obesity and nutrition-related diseases) and their production is detrimental to the environment (waste of limited water and energy resources). The same analysis holds for the consumption and production of ultra-processed foods. Other examples include the advocacy to reduce red meats consumption (both to prevent chronic diseases and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), and to increase plant-based foods (both to improve micronutrient status and to revive agricultural biodiversity).
Moroccan citizen., Freelance consultant in human nutrition and development. Among other activities, I give lectures in private higher education school,s and also consultancy work with FAO, UNDP, the Moroccan Ministry of Agriculture and the Moroccan Ministry of Health. I contribute to advocacy for better ways of life (nutrition and physical activity) among Moroccan population: giving various conferences and talks in scientific congresses, to students, to workers in public and private institutions as well as to members of non government organisations. I am actively involved in various NGOs whose objectives are better ways of life and the protection of the environment. These include the Slow Food Movement, the Maroc Nature et Culture (Moroccan association for the preservation of Moroccan nature and culture), the Moroccan Centre of Consumption (presently in construction, a centre that will provide technical support to the over 40 Moroccan consumer protection associations).
For my master's degree thesis (Iowa State University, 1983-1986), I worked on 'Moroccan planners' and professionals' attitudes toward nutrition planning', inspired by the previous worldwide survey by Claudio Shuftan whom I included in the questionnaire reviewing committee. This research was an opportunity for me to realise how poor were the attitudes of Moroccan planners toward nutrition; at the same time, the questionnaire itself helped improve the interviewed planners' awareness about the importance of nutrition in national development.
My PhD thesis (Tufts University, 1989-1993) was on economic, dietary and nutritional impacts of an agricultural development project. I worked on an irrigation project in Morocco. This was again a good opportunity to understand how big development projects don't always impact positively on the local rural populations, in particular in relation to their dietary intake and nutritional status. Among other negative effects, have been the decline in the consumption of milk and traditional dairy products, especially among small producers. This has been the result of the commercialisation of milk production when the processed products could not reach the rural population for lack of infrastructure (roads and electricity).
In parallel, I was frequently involved in the design and implementation of various schemes for the introduction of nutrition teaching and nutrition education (in the medical curriculum and among agricultural extension workers). I contributed also to the national strategy of nutrition in Morocco and contributed as well in other African countries through FAO consulting. I have contributed to the study of the status and role of rural women in development in general and in the management of natural resources in several regions of Morocco.
At the international level, apart from the above mentioned FAO consulting, I was involved in several research projects. These include work on food systems in the Mediterranean area with CIHEAM; on the nutrition and epidemiological transition with the IUNS Task Force headed by Barry Popkin and Carlos Monteiro; a whole food system approach to quality and safety in Mediterranean and East European countries with European Union; and also human security in Arab countries with UNDP.
jelloune@yahoo.com
I was born in Brasília, the capital of Brazil. My family comes from a small town in the state of Minas Gerais. As so many Brazilians of their time, in the 1970s my parents left their rural life and moved to Brasília, the recently built new capital, in search of better conditions of life. My parents were very hard working and have always motivated me to study and to invest in education, something that they never had the chance to do and that they were rightly convinced would make a difference in my life.
At the age of 17, I had to choose a career when applying for university, and for some reason I ended up in nutrition. During most of my bachelor's degree I enjoyed the science of nutrition, but felt there was something missing. I started to find my feet while studying nutrition education, engaging in volunteering and trainee positions in this area, which brought me closer to public health nutrition. In my final year of graduation, I finally found the light in the amazing lectures of Professor Bethsáida Schmitz, who brilliantly made the link between nutrition and the social reality in Brazil. Nutrition finally made sense to me.
I worked for the Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) programme in Brazil, coordinated by the Ministry of Social Development and Fight against Hunger, for almost five years. The focus of my work was on food insecurity, hunger, and nutrition education. I also participated in the National Food and Nutrition Security Council, and the discussions towards a food and nutrition security system in Brazil.
In 2008, I decided it was the appropriate moment to go back to full time study, and moved to the United Kingdom for my MSc. My current research interests involve nutrition policy analysis, climate change, and the United Nations.
Brazilian citizen, based in Oppland, Norway. Currently an MSc student in social policy & social research at the University of Southampton, UK. Postgraduate diploma in food and nutrition consultancy from the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil, in which I studied the use of Paulo Freire's philosophy as a methodological approach for nutrition education activities. Recently completed a 6 months internship in the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN), related to nutrition and climate change:
Sabrina.Ionata@gmail.com
United Kingdom citizen. Research experience combines nutritional sciences, epidemiology, health promotion and community-based interventions and especially the development of dietary assessment methodologies for multi-ethnic populations. Research, grants and/or publications have been multidisciplinary, multi-ethnic and included major chronic diseases: 1) development of dietary assessment methodologies for multi-ethnic and indigenous populations to assess food, nutrient, food group, heterocyclic aromatic amine intake, and determine dietary adequacy; 2) developing and evaluating community- based, dietary and lifestyle (including physical activity) intervention studies for obesity and chronic disease prevention; 3) determining diet-disease associations in 215,000 people, for cancer, fatal cardiovascular disease, total mortality and diabetes; 4) examining nutrient-gene interactions and risk of cancer in different ethnic groups (African Americans, Native Hawaiians, Latinos, Japanese Americans, Japanese Brazilians, Caucasians); 5) monitoring the effects of climate change on diet and ways of life
gita.sharma@ualberta.ca
I was born and grew up in London, UK. I was interested in biology at school and went on to study BSc Physiology at Southampton University. One of the optional modules I studied on my undergraduate course was Public Health Nutrition which I found very interesting at the time. When I completed my degree I decided to spend some time travelling and went to Peru, Bolivia, China and South-East Asia. I was saddened by the living conditions of some people in these parts of the world and noticed the lack of variety in their diets. I decided that I would like to study for a Masters degree in public health nutrition and enrolled at Southampton University. The course was excellent, I learnt a lot about research methods, policy, programmes and statistics, and I met some like-minded people who also felt strongly about improving the situation of the world's poorest people and reducing health inequalities. This provided me with plenty of motivation to follow a career in public health nutrition.
After obtaining my masters degree in 2006 I started my job as a research assistant at the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit in Southampton working on a programme of research in India. This involves working with research teams based in Mumbai and Mysore (South India) on nutritional aspects of randomised controlled trials and cohort studies, assessing the impact of nutrition in early life on risk of chronic disease in later life. I was attracted to this work because of the way in which the research was community led and because I was interested in the developmental origins idea. I registered for a part time PhD in 2008 and continued with my role as research assistant. My thesis, which I expect to submit in 2012, is on the nutritional status of slum dwelling women in Mumbai.
UK citizen, based in Southampton, UK and Mumbai, India. Working as a research assistant and studying for a PhD part time. My main interests are food based approaches to improving long term health, maternal and child nutrition, developmental origins of health and disease and community based approaches to improving nutritional status. During my current work I have authored research papers and made several presentations at international conferences.
sk@mrc.soton.ac.uk
My fascination with food was ignited when I was very young, through childhood summers spent in India. I still vividly remember mornings peeling ruby pomegranates with my grandfather, lunches of hot kalva oysters with dry spice coats that burst the sweet-salty taste of sea into my mouth. And I remember the first time I was addressed by a street beggar, a young girl who called me didi (elder sister) and asked me for money for food.
This juxtaposition of feast and famine remained with me. As an entering college student I began public health service in Nicaragua and immediately noticed nutrition as a root cause of many of the health issues I observed. Where I did not expect to see nutrition was in neuroscience, the other focus of my undergraduate studies. Through courses on neurodevelopment and a project in my research lab supporting the effects of maternal diet on cognitive performance of offspring in rats, I began to see the connections between nutrition, neurodevelopment, and public health. On a second trip to Nicaragua I began a research study on barriers to childhood nutrition in the impoverished region of Rancho Grande and led a team to serve in a pediatric feeding center and agriculture school in the area. When through my work I becameclose with a girl with reduced cognitive ability due to severe early malnutrition, my interdisciplinary passion for public health nutrition was solidified.
Already studying neurodevelopment through a major in molecular neuroscience, I added minors in public health and international economic development. After I complete my undergraduate studies I will pursue a master's in public health nutrition and an MD in pediatric neurology. I hope to reduce childhood malnutrition in the world through clinical and epidemiological research on the cognitive consequences of poor nutrition and research-informed consultation with international governmental and non-governmental organisations.
United States citizen.Student at Ohio State University studying molecular neuroscience, public health, and international economic development. OSU chapter co-president and founding member of Project Nicaragua non-profit, where among other projects I work with team members and a local NGO to reduce childhood malnutrition and improve health in Rancho Grande, Nicaragua through nutrition education and economic empowerment initiatives.
khambadkone.2@buckeyemail.osu.edu
I was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, at a time when black Americans in southern states like Maryland went to racially segregated schools. Segregation was surely the most dominant social factor shaping my early childhood, having affected the life choices and chances of my parents, my family, and our entire networks. The fortunate aspects for me were that in my segregated public school I had top notch black educators who really cared about us and instilled a sense that we could be high achievers, and had an obligation to be exemplars – to show that we could compete and excel in the larger society. Food and nutrition were not yet in the picture – not, that is, academically.
Moving to integrated schools and into the big wide world took me to Syracuse University in upstate New York for college, with a major in psychology and minor in sociology, but really a major in the civil rights movement, because the time was 1961 to 1965. It was a bit hard to focus on things inside the classroom, but I made it through, went to New York City and took a job as a social caseworker in order to try to help people, which morphed to jobs in various health areas such as family planning and addiction treatment. A Masters in social work did not decrease my then high level of frustration at how little I could really help.
When by chance I found myself in Ithaca, also in upstate New York, I discovered that studying and working in nutrition was perhaps a more concrete and certain way to help people. Daphne Roe, who became my advocate (I needed one considering that my background was social work rather than biochemistry or anything with any nutrient density to it) and dissertation advisor in the nutrition programme at Cornell was a great model, with her UK-framed perspective on public health nutrition.
I pursued studies on salt and hypertension, which plunged me immediately into public health policy issues because we knew even then (in the mid 1970s) that dietary salt reduction was warranted. I figured out that there was such a thing as epidemiology, and then met Jean-Pierre Habicht who began to talk to me about two-by-two tables. I stayed on the Cornell faculty to teach community nutrition, but my appetite for public health ultimately led me to leave idyllic Ithaca for Baltimore to study public health at Johns Hopkins (choosing that location was not entirely a coincidence given family there).
The circle began to take me back to wanting to help people, now by directly studying things of a social, cultural, and political nature. I stayed on the Hopkins faculty in epidemiology, was pulled into the (re) discovery of health disparities, and drew on my personal experiences of how injustice could lead to poor health. Discovered that obesity was a particular issue for black women and became a so-called expert on that topic – this was before the general obesity epidemic. Mostly I was considered a cardiovascular epidemiologist or nutritional epidemiologist.
My current work is completely dominated by the obesity epidemic, although that is a good thing if the focus and energy associated with my efforts actually lead to positive change. My two main platforms have been the International Obesity Task Force, courtesy of Association Council member Philip James, and an organisation that I founded in 2002 – the African American Collaborative Obesity Research Network (www.aacorn.org).
The reason for starting the network will be obvious. In 2010 obesity is more common in black women (compared with US white women and also with black men even given the high rates of obesity in US people overall), as it was in 1984 when I discovered this. But it is now also more common in black than white girls, which is a recent phenomenon. So I formed the network because I thought that a little help from and for my friends could accelerate progress, and my friends could become each others' friends, and so forth. At this writing, given what we now know about the political, social and cultural aspects of food, and the need for a major focus on public health and policy to reverse the epidemic, I am completely at home in this world of endeavour, and like to think that this is also a network to which I belong.
US citizen. Professor of epidemiology in the department of biostatistics and epidemiology and the department of pediatrics (gastroenterology, nutrition section) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philaldelphia; Also at Penn: Associate Dean for health promotion and disease prevention in the School of Medicine; senior scholar in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics; senior Fellow in the Center for Public Health Initiatives, the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics, and the Institute on Aging; and faculty fellow in the Penn Institute for Urban Research. Degrees include MSc in social work from Columbia University, PhD in human nutrition from Cornell, and MPH from Johns Hopkins. Have held faculty positions at Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Penn State University, the University of Illinois at Chicago (where I was head of the nutrition department for three years), and Penn, where I have been since 1999.
Author of numerous research articles, reviews, and book chapters related to the themes in my work. Member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and service on several IOM committees related to obesity or women's health. Member of the World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research panels responsible for the 2007 and 2009 cancer prevention reports. Lead editor, with Ross Brownson, of the Handbook of Obesity Prevention (2007), a primarily US focused text on understanding the landscape for obesity prevention and considering interventions across life stages and in various settings. Lead editor of a 2010 IOM report, Bridging the Evidence Gap in Obesity Prevention: A Framework to Inform Decision Making. This urges policy makers and researchers to consider obesity from a systems perspective and take a broad and transdisciplinary view of what constitutes evidence and how to generate it. Extensive service on expert panels in the US and global nutrition spheres. These have included being vice-chair of the WHO/FAO panel responsible for the 2003 '916' report on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases.
s.kumanyi@mail.med.upenn.edu
Nutrition came my way by chance. I come from the small town of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, one of the largest states in India, where opportunities to pursue higher studies were minimal. While preparing for my medical entrance examination, I happened to qualify for the home science entrance examination at the GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in Pantnagar, Uttrakhand.
Home science is a field with five subdivisions, nutrition being one of them. So from 1999 onwards I have been studying, for my bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees, and for the past five years have been teaching nutrition. Today, I can say with pride that I am in love with what I do!
After my master's in nutrition in 2005, I came to Delhi to study for my PhD and fortunately got Srinath Reddy as my mentor. From that time on, there has been no looking back for me. He advised that I should pursue another master's in public health, preferably from an international university, to get a more holistic vision of nutrition as a discipline and to acquire the requisite epidemiological skills which are currently absent or minimal in the nutrition curriculum in India.
That has been the turning point in my life. I started to view nutrition through a lens which had research and practice integrated. This fuelled a sense of direction and drive in me to work in the area of capacity building of public health nutrition. I realised that knowledge of subjects like epidemiology, research methods and biostatistics are crucial to understanding the problem of malnutrition and work towards alleviating it, especially in lower-income countries.
I have thus been engaged in situation analysis of the teaching and training activities in the area of public health nutrition, and working toward building a curriculum that rises beyond its focus on therapeutics and clinical dietetics and moves to include the necessary research strengthening skills. Dietetics is important, but mere diet-counselling or nutrient intake assessment, should not be the only career options or outcomes for young nutrition graduates or professionals. My broad research interests include public health and nutritional epidemiology especially investigating the role of nutrition in non-communicable diseases – cardiovascular diseases and disorders in particular.
Indian citizen. I am currently a senior lecturer at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), New Delhi, and a postdoctoral fellow (nutrition) at the Centre for Chronic Disease Control (CCDC). I have a doctorate in human nutrition from the University of Delhi , and a second master's degree in public health (distance learning) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London.
I recently returned from Emory University, Atlanta after completing my US training as a part of the NIH sponsored postdoctoral fellowship. I was evaluated as grade: A/excellent. I will pursue the remaining 18 months years at CCDC. At PHFI I am leading the online academic initiative in public health nutrition, and I am involved in curriculum development and teaching. The major areas are nutrition epidemiology, health promotion and public health nutrition).
I am fortunate to have been given many prestigious awards. These include the Young Scientist Award 2009 in experimental nutrition (Nutrition Society of India); The Dr KU Naram Award for securing first rank in the MHSc in 2004-2005 from SNDT University, Mumbai; the Dr Dhirajlal Dhanjibai Shah Memorial Prize (first prize) for the highest GPA in the foods and nutrition department in MHSc. in 2005; the Association of Scientists and Technologists (India) Bombay Chapter Prize for the first position in 2004-2005 in postgraduate department of foods and nutrition, SNDT University, Mumbai.
shweta.khandelwal@phfi.org
I grew up for the first 17 wonderful years of my life in Port Sudan City, the third largest city in Sudan. One thing about living in a port city is that you see what is coming and going. When we were little we saw many United Nation agencies come into the port bringing goods, and we saw the World Food Programme import canned food that was later distributed to us in primary school. In the early 1980s I saw hungry people coming from the famine areas in western Sudan and that took my complete attention, to do something about this. After finishing my first degree, I decided to pursue my graduate studies in the field of community nutrition to help such communities overcome their nutrition problems.
Visiting and working outside my country has given me an opportunity to understand the various causes of dietary behaviour that lead to nutrition related problems. These need to be addressed at various levels. Also as a woman and an activist, I realise that women are most susceptible to lower status in nutrition despite the fact that they are the ones that deal with household aspects of feeding. This has led me to look into the gender disparities in nutrition in my country.
Sudanese citizen. Work in United Arab Emirates since 2008. Currently professor of community nutrition, United Arab Emirates University in Al-Ain. Former Dean of the School of Health Sciences at Ahfad University for women in Sudan. Recently I was awarded a grant from the Emirates foundation to lead a team on a research focuses on interventions aimed at preventing obesity among school children in UAE. I was a trained leader in nutrition and was a former president of the Sudanese Nutrition and Environment Society. I was also a member of the executive committee of the Middle East and North Africa Nutrition Association (MENANA). I am a very active community nutrition advocate via media and I present at many professional nutrition meetings. Am currently teaching a course in public health nutrition. Association founding member.
sidigaw@uaeu.ac.ae
I began to work professionally in public health nutrition half a century ago. I like this work and am proud of it, and it remains my work in retirement.
I graduated from the undergraduate Academy of Nutrition, under the Minister of Health in Jakarta, in 1960. My earliest experience as a government public health nutrition worker was at Aceh Province (with a four million population) working as an educator and advocate with the public and with government policy makers in the province. After graduating MPH in 1969 from the School of Public Health at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, I lectured at the undergraduate school of nutrition in Jakarta and also at Bogor Agriculture University. I was at that time also a member of various field nutrition studies.
I graduated from Cornell University for my master's in international development, and PhD in international nutrition, with Michael Latham as my supervisor.Most of my later life as from 1975 has been dedicated to nutrition lecturing, policy advocacy, nutrition planning and policy making, in food, health and nutrition, at national level. After retiring from government office in 1996, I have led and managed a non-government professional nutrition organisation, working at national and international level. This work continues.
I believe that public health nutrition should lead in policy research and publications on the application not only of nutrition sciences for preventing disease and health promotion, but also in national or regional policy and planning in human development.It should also take a lead in research on food and nutrition safety regulation and enforcement nationally and internationally, and in research on nutrition transition epidemiology. It should be more interdisciplinary, not only among health sciences, but also in economic, political, environmental and other development issues.
Indonesian citizen. As an academic, I am a faculty member as professor of community nutrition at the Bogor Agriculture University, faculty of human ecology, in the department of community nutrition, from 1991 to date. Likewise 1991 to date in the health division, faculty of medicine, Christian University, Jakarta, and also at the public health division, faculty of medicine, Gajah Mada University, Jogyakarta, from 2000 to date. My publication most often cited is Basta SS, Soekirman et al. Iron Deficiency and Productivity, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1979; 32 :916. For others, refer to google: Soekirman. Nutrition
As a public servant, I was Director of Health and Nutrition (1983-1988) and Deputy Minister for Human Development, at the Ministry of National Development Planning, Jakarta (1988 - 1996). I am founder and chairman of the Indonesian Foundation for the Development of Food Fortification (KFI) from 2002 to date; President, the Danone Institute Indonesia (Nutrition), from 2006 to date; board member of the Danone International Institute Paris, from 2010 to date
ssoekirman0@gmail.com
I was born in Pistoia, in the heart of Tuscany, Italy, and I've always lived here. Pistoia cherishes the perfect balance between its roots, the beauty of the landscapes and the taste of a good way of living, also regarding food and nutrition. In Tuscany there are more than 300 traditional food products registered by our regional department for agricultural development and research (ARSIA). These include different kinds of olive oil (an emblem of the culture of the region), cabbages, beans, tomatoes, artichokes, onions and other vegetables, herbs, typical fruits, and also fish, meat, eggs, and our special bread made without salt.
Thus it has been very easy for me to have a great love for good balanced meals and food, sustainable agriculture, and food policy. I feel this in my DNA, and so I naturally became a dietitian involved in food policy and public health.
I have been fortunate to work with a lot of extraordinary Italian colleagues inspired by public health nutrition thinking. These have included Guglielmo Bonaccorsi of the department of public health of the University of Florence, in whom I have found a refuge to explain my professional doubts and to support my professional practice. One of my main professional goals remains to connect the results from public nutrition research with decision-making processes. Passion can make all the difference.
Italian citizen. I work in Pistoia, in the city's food, hygiene and nutrition department. I am actively involved in public health nutrition research, in empowering communities and in strategies aimed at improving good nutrition and well-being in different settings. These include schools, nursing homes, homes for the elderly. Special emphasis always is on environmental sustainability, social equity and nutritional health outcomes. I am a member of the board of directors of the Italian Dietetic Association (ANDID) and am editor-in-chief of its journal.
stefdietitian@gmail.com
When in 1975-1976 I took Michael Latham's introductory and advanced courses in international nutrition at Cornell University, New York, I decided on this as my career direction. It appeared to be a way to make a difference for millions of disadvantaged people in the low-income countries. Because I doubted (and continue to do so) that professionals from rich countries can or should play very active technical roles (other than capacity building), I chose for my master's research an issue where rich countries certainly were the problem: the impact of commercial baby food advertising on infant feeding patterns, conducted in St. Vincent, West Indies.
During the spring of 1977 I lived for a few months in Ghana and my former wife lived in Cote d'Ivoire, as we did a study for FAO on the economic value of breastfeeding in west Africa. It was the most detailed of such studies at the time. Published in 1979 by FAO in English and French, they told me a few years later that it was their 'best seller'. (It was of course sent for free to anyone who requested it).
In 1978-81,with a Rockefeller Foundation grant, I planned, managed and organised a three-part evaluation of a 3-year breastfeeding promotion project in Yemen. This was the topic of my PhD dissertation. In the following decades, the average duration of breastfeeding there doubled in both rural and urban areas. From 1983 to 1985, I returned to Yemen, employed by the ministry of health to help set up its first nutrition unit.
Since then I have worked as a consultant for UN agencies, the World Bank, and others, dealing with a large number of governments and their agencies and with civil society organisations. Much of my work has been concerned with capacity building on policy, programme and research approaches in low-income countries, mostly dealing with maternal and child nutrition, and often specifically with breastfeeding.
From 1985-1994, I was a dedicated full-time consultant to the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) based at Uppsala University's International Maternal and Child Health unit (IMCH). I assisted in planning, follow up and evaluation of their large nutrition portfolio in Asia and Africa, and their support to international breastfeeding non-governmental organisations. Then until 2004 I remained at IMCH as associate professor of International Child Health, running multi-year Sida-funded capacity building programmes for Tanzania and Zimbabwe that strengthened everything from technical nutrition capacity, to accounting, to libraries. Experts from Sweden, the US or the UK provided specific defined services to meet their identified needs and requirements. Sida really does most of its development assistance this way – the budgets are negotiated at a higher level, but ministry departmental officials made most of the decisions on how the money allocated to them would be used.
During this period I continued to do consultancy work, largely with the World Bank and the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA). At Uppsala my students' research work focused on public health nutrition issues related to infant feeding, micronutrient malnutrition, and obesity. Most of them came from economically developing countries and did their research in their countries.
During my 19 years at Uppsala University, I made duty travel visits of an average duration of two weeks perhaps 25 times to Tanzania, 20 to Zimbabwe, 15 to Bangladesh (mainly to northern rural areas), 10 to Zambia, 7 to South Africa, 3 to Sri Lanka, 2 to China, and 2 to Yemen. I lived in India most of the time during 1997-1998 working on ICDS projects in three states and travelled there perhaps a dozen other times. Perhaps half of this time in the field was used for planning, follow up, or evaluation of projects and the other half was for capacity building.
During 2001-2002 I spent about 6 months living in Penang, Malaysia helping WABA, mainly in planning the technical components of their forum in Arusha, Tanzania, and the preceding WABA-UNICEF Colloquium on HIV and Infant Feeding, as well as editing the published proceedings from the latter.
From 2004-2008 I worked with the Program for Appropriate Technologies in Health (PATH), largely as director of the Ultra Rice Project (focusing on fortifying rice in China, India, Brazil and Colombia) and in research and advocacy efforts on HIV and infant feeding, largely in Rwanda, Cote d'Ivoire, and Kenya. In 2008 I became professor of nutrition at Hanyang University in Seoul Korea where I teach a wide range of nutrition courses and assist with a number of public health nutrition research studies.
In an unjust world, most of the resources available for combating poverty and malnutrition reside among the poor themselves. However, expecting impoverished populations and communities to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, while they are being held down by health and nutritional problems that sap their energy and inhibit their children from learning, just adds insult to injury.
Dual citizen of USA and Sweden. MAEd, MSc, PhD. Studied at Cornell University. From 1978-1985 based half the time in Yemen. From 1985-2004 worked in Sweden, with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) based at the University of Uppsala. Throughout this time and afterwards have been involved with the UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN). As far as I know, I am the only person who has attended all (but one) of the 24 full SCN meetings that have taken place since 1987. I was chair of the bilateral constituency from 1990-1995, and have been chair of the civil society organization constituency since 2008.
From 2004-2008 worked with PATH in Washington DC. From 2008, professor of nutrition at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea. Author or coauthor of 67 peer reviewed journal articles, 33 letters to journal editors, ten books or published monographs, 43 book chapters or articles in published meetings proceedings or newsletters, 23 published abstracts, 76 presentations at scientific meetings, and 24 major consultant reports.
tedgreiner@yahoo.com
Nutrition and good health have been important parts of my life, since I had problems with acne in my teens. As a result, I developed a strong interest in nutrition and exercise to help keep my body fit and healthy. My dietary practices at that time were not optimal, and I have in recent years changed to a plant-based diet.
I never thought of going into nutrition science for a career. I chose engineering. I graduated from California State University in 1956 and worked for several companies in Los Angeles and San Diego. My speciality became configuration management, a sub-discipline of systems engineering. This involves setting up systematic procedures to identify the requirements for developing new systems. Its evaluation includes the impact of proposed changes on performance, reliability, safety, costs, durability and ability to function efficiently under expected operational environments. Long term system maintainability and avoidance of unintended consequences are also evaluated. I co-authored the first book on this subject: Fundamentals of Configuration Management. Later I perceived the relevance of this work to human efficiency, health, and longevity.
In 1976 I got my master's degree in Business Administration. My thesis was on how the increasing size of an organisation affected its level of entropy or disorder and operating efficiency. I found that efficiency declined with increasing size, energy and complexity. I was already thinking about whether the entropy theory might explain human ageing. Based on the second law of thermodynamics, I surmised that increasing body weight and energy needs would increase disorder and promote more rapid ageing. I subsequently published a paper on this hypothesis in Human Development (1974).
I then began thinking how to test this hypothesis and decided to find data on the longevity of people based on body size. I found a baseball encyclopaedia that provided height, weight and longevity data for professional players. I used height as a stable index of body size compared with weight, which is liable to change considerably over the life-course. Subsequent studies showed that weight during young adulthood provided similar results. Around 1990, Dr. Lowell Storms of the Medical School of the University of California in San Diego and I evaluated the survival of US army veterans, based on height, using data available from the Veterans Administration Hospital in San Diego. Our findings, published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization in 1992, showed that shorter veterans lived a few years longer than taller ones.
In 1992, I established Reventropy Associates to focus full-time on my research into human size and its worldwide ramifications. With the help of various researchers, about 35 papers were published on the undesirable connection between height and nutrition, chronic disease, longevity, resource consumption and the environment. My associates have included specialists in health, medicine, biology and nutrition. I also wrote a book on human height called The Truth About Your Height. My most recent book, edited and written with colleagues, Human Body Size and the Laws of Scaling – Performance, Growth, Longevity and Ecological Ramifications, was published in 2007.
Our findings tend to create kneejerk reactions in some tall people. After reading The Truth About Your Height, a member of a tall person's club wrote that if he met me in person and I offered my hand in friendship, he would crush it! Once, a tall girlfriend said she was upset with my findings and that tall people didn't like me. I tried to explain that whether short or tall, height is not a badge of achievement or wrongdoing, since we didn't have a choice on how tall we wanted to be. It's no different than being born male or female or being of a different ethnic group.
It is argued that our children should reach their maximum genetic potential for height. My response is that we have a genetic potential to reach a bodyweight of over 300 pounds. Yet, with the exception of a few sports, such as sumo wrestling and American football, no one would recommend this. Males also have a genetic potential for high aggression, but we also shouldn't promote that human feature.
US citizen. Born in New York City. First degree in engineering from Los Angeles State University. BS in engineering. MBA from Pepperdine University in Southern California. Since 1992, Director of Reventropy Associates, San Diego, California. All research conducted over the last 18 years has been related to increasing human body size and its ramifications.
Over the years, my associates and I have published our height findings and observations in many journals including: Bulletin of the World Health Organization, South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Human Development, European Heart Journal, Public Health Nutrition, Experimental Gerontology, International Journal of Medical and Biological Frontiers, Medical Science Monitor, Nutrition Research, Acta Paediatrica, Medical Hypotheses, Western Journal of Medicine, Ageing Research Reviews, American Journal of Epidemiology, and Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. Contributions have been made to a number of books including: Epidemiology and Demography in Public Health; International Encyclopedia of Public Health; Physiological, Performance, Growth, Longevity and Ecological Ramifications; Trends in Nutrition Research; New Developments in Obesity Research. A list of our papers and books is available from my website: www.humanbodysize.com.
samarastt@aol.com
I was born in Armenia in 1980. During the past decades my country has endured great environmental, political and economic turmoil. The earthquake of 1988 in Leninakan, Armenia's second largest city, took 50,000 lives and completely destroyed three cities and many villages. As a former Soviet republic, Armenia faced socio-economic chaos following the 1991 collapse of the USSR. These resulted in immeasurable psychological devastation, and economic and other deprivation beyond the capacity of Armenia to address. I know first-hand about the difficulties people face due to malnutrition and other socio-economic problems. After I graduated from medical school, I became very interested in public health. I worked in different programmes within Armenia, advocating healthy ways of life and healthy diets.
My career as a healthcare professional started from my work at Yerevan State Medical University's department of epidemiology. After having worked there for two years, I was granted an award for completion of my master's degree in the USA. During my US studies I was involved in different projects, including the New York State Department of Health WIC (women, infants, and children) nutritional programme.
Working on the evaluation of that project made me think about the differences in public nutrition problems in countries like the USA, in contrast with much less resourced countries like Armenia. Ever since I have been very interested in public health nutrition, which is why I was more than happy for the opportunity to work at the Hellenic Health Foundation, where we have many public health nutrition-related programmes running.
My job requires daily communication with people of different nationalities from all over the world. Based on what I've learned from all of them, public health nutrition is an essential aspect everywhere. The world needs to deal with these issues, and the world needs truly dedicated people for that purpose.
I am a citizen of Armenia. Currently resident in Greece. Medical doctor, MSc in epidemiology. Researcher at the Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece. Currently involved in projects on health and ageing (CHANCES- Consortium on Health and Ageing Network of Cohorts in Europe and the United States) Formerly an assistant professor at the department of epidemiology of Yerevan State Medical University in Armenia. Active member of the Association of Armenian microbiologists, parasitologists and epidemiologists.
tina.karapetyan@hhf-greece.gr
Serendipity got me interested in children's diets and physical activity. (Long story; ask me about it when we meet!) While initially focused on chronic disease prevention among children through healthier diets and physical activity, especially involving families, the emerging pediatric obesity epidemic focused my work on obesity prevention, which is another path to adult chronic disease prevention.
In my belief we have not been sufficiently self critical of our conceptual frameworks, measurement or intervention methods. We seem to be repeating our mistakes. Accordingly I have advocated for substantial incremental innovation in all aspects of intervention design, delivery, measurement and evaluation. Colleagues outside the USA have conducted important work in many of these areas. There needs to be more sharing and collaboration across national borders. The final chapters in this book haven't been conceived, no less written. Lots of opportunities for high quality research.
US citizen. Currently professor of pediatrics and leader of the behavioral nutrition group in the USDA supported children's nutrition research centre in the Department of Pediatrics in the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Principal investigator on seven externally funded research grants; collaborator on six other grants; and mentor to seven junior scientists. Am particularly interested in designing video games to promote dietary and physical activity behaviour change; and to incorporate biological variables into models predicting children's and adolescent diet and physical activity. Association founding member.
tbaranow@bcm.tmc.edu
I was born 31 years ago in a small town called Blitar in Indonesia. I was adopted by my parents and was frequently ill during childhood, presumably because of not being breastfed at all. I became committed to public health nutrition in 2003. In 2006 to 2007 I did my Master's training in the field of community nutrition, in the school of population health at the University of Queensland, Australia. That's when public health nutrition really became my passion.
In late 2007 I worked with the World Food Programme, conducting a follow-up survey of their nutrition rehabilitation programme in Madura, Lombok and West Timor, three Indonesian islands where malnutrition is very prevalent. In 2009 my project was helping to empower over 1,000 health care workers in Surabaya City to combat malnutrition among under 5 year old children. In Indonesia, a highly populated country, malnutrition remains a big public health problem – 17.9 per cent among under 5s. Now obesity is also beginning to be a problem, at 4 per cent among children, according to the national basic health survey in 2010.
Indonesian citizen. I am currently working as a lecturer in the nutrition department of the faculty of public health, at the University of Airlangga. As an Indonesian state university lecturer, my main duty consists of three areas which are: teaching and lecturing; conducting research and community service.
triasmahmudiono@gmail.com
I was born and grew up in a very poor village in the mining and forest area of northern Sweden. Poverty never threatened our dignity, because all in the area were equally poor. The new Swedish social democratic government elected in the early 1950s enabled me to continue my studies past the secondary level. At the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg I studied food science and technology up to my PhD. During the same time I also studied economics, mathematics and philosophy.
My interest of nutrition came from one of my mentors, Olof Melander, a guru in the area of applied nutrition. He was one of the founders of the Swedish-supported Ethiopian Nutrition Institute in the 1960s. His course on 'nutrition in developing countries' for PhD students inspired many of us to work in that area. The Swedish government's International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida) invited me for a study tour to Tanzania in 1973, and so I left my promising research career for a two year Sida job at the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre. I worked there for five years and really never left Tanzania after that. Tanzania has become my second, or maybe my first, home country.
After then I worked for two years at the UN University world hunger programme in Tokyo. My supervisor Nevin Scrimshaw taught me nutrition and also how to work non-stop at a 200 per cent level. During this period I developed a conceptual framework on the causes of malnutrition, which identifies immediate, underlying and basic causes of nutritional status, and also identifies 'food', health' and 'care' as the key underlying conditions for good child nutrition. Later on this was adopted by UNICEF and is now used by most organisations and agencies in the field. This work opened the door for me to join UNICEF, first as country representative in Tanzania for eight years, then chief of nutrition in UNICEF headquarters in New York for five years, then regional director for South Asia for five years, and then for East and Southern Africa for five years.
During my time as country representative in Tanzania I led the work of the WHO/UNICEF joint nutrition support programme in the Iringa region. This was one of the great successes in community-based nutrition in the 1980s. As UNICEF chief of nutrition later, I developed the nutrition strategy that was applied in all country programmes in the 1990s. When appointed by James Grant, then Executive Director of UNICEF, as regional director for South Asia, I was asked to spend most of my time on the serious problem of malnutrition. The consequent nutrition initiative for South Asia served for many years as the 'think tank' for nutrition in the region.
From all this experience, I am convinced that people who are poor should be recognised as the key actors in their own development, and not as passive beneficiaries or targets of transfers of commodities and services. I genuinely hate the notion of 'packages' which for me represent the antithesis of development. I also firmly believe in the constructivist approach, that we all construct and re-construct what we see as 'reality'.
The 1990 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child started UNICEF's work with human rights. A new explicitly human rights-based mission statement was adopted in 1996, and then the UN Secretary-General asked for all relevant UN agencies to apply a human rights-based approach to development. UNICEF moved fastest, largely as a result of the work we had done in East and Southern Africa.
I was appointed senior advisor on human rights to the Executive Director during my last year at UNICEF. This enabled me to link with many other organisations involved in the struggle for the realisation of human rights. Currently my own priority research interest is about the complex relationships among development, democracy, justice and human rights, which I do in cooperation with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute at the University of Lund, Sweden.
I am a Swedish citizen. Having working outside that country for the last 35 years. I regard myself as a member of Tanzanian society. PhD in food science and technology, University of Gothenberg. From 1976-1980 worked at the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre, as chief of planning and then from 1980-1981 at the United Nations University in Tokyo, working for its world hunger programme. Then worked for UNICEF for 24 years, first as representative in Tanzania 1981-1990, then Chief of Nutrition in New York between 1990 and 1994, then regional director for South Asia 1994-1999, then regional director for East and Southern Africa 1999-2003, then finally in my last year with UNICEF as senior advisor to the Executive Director.
I have been an active member of the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition for many years, initiated the SCN working group on nutrition as a human right, and am an alternate chair of the SCN civil society group. Currently am executive director of The Owls, an international consultancy company in the area of human rights, democracy and development. During the last few years I have provided support to a number of organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, UNAIDS, Sida, and the African Child Policy Forum.
urban@urbanjonsson.com
Food has always been a special interest to me. Growing up in the Midwest of the US, I was a member of a 4-H vegetable club and the National Junior Vegetable Grower Association. I won prizes at our county and state fairs, and helped pay my tuition at Michigan State University by growing vegetables during summers. I studied food science and physics as an undergraduate and then attended medical school at the University of Michigan.
While a medical student, I conducted a nutritional survey among the Potawanami tribe of Indians in northern Michigan and was struck by the 50 per cent prevalence of type 2 diabetes; understanding this has been a lifelong goal. After completing a residency in internal medicine and an MPH at Harvard, I worked as a faculty member at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania for three years and became impressed with the power of epidemiologic methods to address both clinical and public health issues.
Returning to Harvard, I completed a doctoral degree in epidemiology. During that time it became apparent that epidemiologic approaches were needed to answer many central questions in human nutrition, and I have spent most of my career attempting to bridge these two fields. Much of this research has been through the establishment of three large cohorts, the Nurses' Health Study, the Nurses' Health Study II, and the Health Professional's Follow-up Study, now with over 30 years of follow-up and many repeated measures of diet. Since 1992 I have been chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health.
US citizen. I am currently Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. I am a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (and serve on its Food and Nutrition Board) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I have authored or co-authored over 1200 original reports and reviews and have published Nutritional Epidemiology (Oxford University Press), the first book in this field. I have also published three books for general audiences: Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating (available in many languages), Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less, and The Fertility Diet.
walter.willett@channing.harvard.edu
I was born and grew up in Malaysia until my upper secondary school higher school certificate examination, after which I went to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, US. I majored in in nutrition and dietetics and took these courses at the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul.
My interest in public health nutrition started in my first year undergraduate course after witnessing the suffering from hunger and poverty in low-income countries as result of the energy crisis in 1973. I then changed my major to nutrition to learn and to understand better the political economy of diseases and malnutrition. It was also a time when when the blame on protein alone for malnutrition shifted, and the importance of lack of energy and protein was recognised. The problem of protein and energy deficits at the time were still rampant, and they are closely related to economic inequality, unfair trade, political and ideological maneuvering, such as the dispensing of food aid or food for peace for countries in needs under Public Law 480 of the United States.
After graduation I read for a master's degree in clinical nutrition in Rush University, Chicago, and worked for a short period as a dietitian. However, the hospital environment did not interest me and I later went to Columbia University, New York. to earn a master's degree in community nutrition and nutrition education and subsequently a doctorate in nutrition and public health.
When I came back to Malaysia I became a nutrition and public health lecturer at the school of medical sciences at the University of Science, Penang, for 17 years, where we carried out my community public health nutrition projects and research, particularly on topics related to undernutition, obesity, and quality of life of underprivileged populations. We later established the new school of health sciences, and started two new undergraduate programmes in dietetics and in nutrition.
I see nutrition as an essential and integral part of health and wellness, however, at the macro or societal level, improvement in socioeconomic status is still the cornerstone for improvement in nutrition and health status in developing countries of today. Thus injustice and inequality are enemies that need to be defeated first.
Malaysian citizen. I am currently professor of nutrition and public health and chair of the programme in nutrition at the school of health sciences, University of Science, Penang, Malaysia. I am a member of the editorial board of the Malaysian Journal of Nutrition since 2006. My areas of specialty are community nutrition, obesity, quality of life, nutrition and capacity building.
wanmanan@kb.usm.my
