Basel, Basel, Switzerland
My work has been concerned with issues of childhood health and nutrition in developing countries with a special focus on nutrition and infectious diseases interactions within the household and community environment. I have been developing more cost-effective, targeted micronutrient supplementation strategies for reducing childhood diarrheal diseases using household indicators of pathogen-specific diarrheal exposure. I have also been developing causal models that predict children’s exposure risk and effectiveness of different WASH and nutrition interventions. These models will serve as an important toolkit for the prevention and management of diarrheal disease among young children in low- and middle- income countries. My work has also focused on how changing associations between nutritional status, food security and inflammatory markers relate to trends in nutrition and health in countries passing through the epidemiological transition. I have been working with the Mexican Secretary of Health as part of this effort to address the growing problem of obesity and chronic disease in Mexico and what interventions in the early lifespan are most effective in reducing this burden.