My principal interests are in designing, developing, and testing interventions and strategies to improve maternal and child nutrition in developing countries. Thus, much of my research has focused on elucidating the nutritional determinants of health, performance, and survival in mothers and in children from conception through childhood. The major outcomes I have studied include fetal, infant, and child growth; fetal, infant, and child morbidity and mortality; maternal body composition, lactation performance, and duration of postpartum amenorrhea and subfertility; and anemia and vitamin A nutrition. I have developed and tested nutritional surveillance systems that can trigger interventions to prevent famines, and more importantly to help design policy to improve nutritional status. Recently I have been investigating how to improve the delivery of nutrition to those who need it, including the development and implementation of nutrition sensitive programs. My expertise is also pertinent to U.S. domestic nutrition and health and some of my work relates to hunger and nutritional interventions in the U.S.A.
These interests are developed in retirement by presentations, mentoring and participating in research at Cornell, at the International Food Policy Research Institute, at the Mexican National Institute of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO), by participating in conferences, and by serving on policy venues such as the WHO Expert Committee on Nutrition, and the Board of Helen Keller International, an international non-governmental humanitarian organization