I am a biological anthropologist, specializing in contemporary human variation. I am interested in uncovering reasons why some public health problems, such as anemia, are so pervasive despite decades of intervention efforts. I tend to draw on evolutionary and social theories and hypotheses to these problems situated in ecological and cultural settings. I have investigated how women and children cope with nutritional and disease stress in harsh conditions of northern Kenya. My current research investigates how human milk nutrient and immune content changes (or not) when mothers are exposed to nutritional and disease stress, again in northern Kenya, or when human milk is experimentally exposed to bacteria in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. I am also involved in research on iron nutrition and COVID-19 risk among healthcare workers in Nigeria. My research efforts also include making biomarker techniques more useful for researchers without ready access to centralized labs.

- Evolutionary Nutritional Adaptations and COVID-19 Risk among Healthcare Workers. (PI: Wander K, Binghamton U)

- Evaluating the effect of household composition and food insecurity on mother-infant infection risk (Student PI: Amulya Vankayalapati)

- Factors affecting mother-infant infection risk among drought-afflicted agropastoralists: the role of livestock herd dynamics