Martha Mwangome

Professor Martha Kaeni Mwangome is a nutritional epidemiologist with an M.Sc. in Global Health Sciences from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in Nutrition Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Currently working full time as a Research scientist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), Centre for geographic medicine Coast (CGMRC) at Kilifi, Kenya. She has more than 18 years’ experience in maternal and child health and nutrition research in Africa.

Her research has broadly focused on strategies to improve care of nutritional vulnerable infants aged below 6 months (u6m). Over the years, she has published extensively on extending the use of the mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) to identify nutritional vulnerability in early infancy and also on the use of breastfeeding peer supporters to re-establish and support retention of exclusive breastfeeding as management for wasting among infants u6m during hospital admission and follow-up after discharge. More recently she has been setting up a trial on multiple micronutrient supplementation which are known to prevent small and vulnerable birth outcomes.

Professor Mwangome is currently funded by the Wellcome trust as an intermediate fellow and by the Gates Foundation. She has previously received funding from Global Health strategy and Africa Research Excellence Fund (AREF).

Professor Mwangome sits in the external advisory groups of the BMGF maternal nutrition harmonization group and the WHO early infancy growth study and is a member of the African Nutrition Society (ANS) and American Society of clinical Nutrition (ASN). She actively participates in the Nutrition research technical working group (TWG) in Kenya, the Management of small and at-risk infants under 6 months (MAMI) special interest group and the Concurrent Wasting and Stunting (WaSt) Technical working group hosted by the Emergency Nutrition Network.