I am a food economist, and my research focuses on the linkages between agriculture and child nutrition in low-income settings, particularly farm families. I received my PhD from the Tufts Nutrition School in May 2015. I did my dissertation research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with the support of a U.S. Borlaug Fellowship in Global Food Security.
The DRC is one of the most undernourished countries in the world, yet has ample resources (beautiful soil, plentiful rainfall, lots of land) for food production. This is quite the paradox, because one would expect crop productive potential to be associated with good nutrition. In one of my dissertation papers, I used a natural experiment strategy to assess the protective health effects of a household’s access to services.
My dissertation also included a study on endemic civil conflict and child nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa, and a study of the effects of nearby urbanization on the nutrition of farm families. I look forward to continuing my research program using large-scale spatial data – including climate and land-cover data – from around the world, and also collecting data locally in the Meadville area to investigate the links between the food system and health here in the U.S.A.