New news from The Young Research Group will be shared on Dr. Sera Young’s LinkedIn.
Past news
-
Pica, Parrots, and People – An NPR Articles Discusses Clay Eating
NPR journalist Carolyn Beans recently interviewed Dr. Young about a recent scientific article that documents the geophagic behavior of Amazonian parrots. The authors set out to test the two leading hypotheses about geophagy: earth is consumed to protect against toxins in the diet (i.e. secondary plant metabolites) during periods of increased nutritional demand, clay is…
-
After Nearly a Year Away, Vicky is Back – And Ready to Write Her Dissertation!
For 10 productive months, Vicky was in Singida, Tanzania doing work that will ultimately inform her PhD dissertation. As part of the Singida Nutrition and Agro-ecology Project (SNAP), Vicky helped implement two surveys and completed much of the qualitative data collection. She will use data collected from her time abroad to write about the effects…
-
Welcome to the Team, Maggie!
We offer a warm welcome to Margaret Butler, an incoming Ph.D. student at Northwestern University, focusing on biological anthropology and human biology. She is passionate about biocultural approaches to anthropological research concerning human health. Her undergraduate thesis was an exploration of the variables impacting women’s decision to breastfeed in Ithaca, NY. Maggie plans to focus…
-
Congrats to Katie – From Fellow to Faculty Member at Cornell!
Dr. Katie Fiorella, an Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University jointly hosted by our group and Chris Barrett’s, is completing her post-doc and moving into a new role. She will join the faculty in Population Medicine and in Cornell’s new Masters in Public Health program as the lead in the food systems and health concentration. Katie’s…
-
Making a Splash in the New “Water Security” Journal
This week, our paper came out in the newish journal “Water Security”. In it, we argue that water security shouldn’t be seen as merely the sufficiency of water as an object (“H2O”), but should be reconceptualized and explicitly linked to broader social and political relations that enable benefits to water related services (e.g., drinking, recreation, productive uses,…
-
SNAP Takes Home First Prize at Nane-Nane Fair in Central Tanzania
Mentor farmers representing the Singida Nutrition and Agro-ecology Project (SNAP) won first place at the Nane Nane (Farmer’s Day celebrated each year in Tanzania) Fair in Dodoma. SNAP farmers were selected to represent the Rural Singida District at the fair, ahead of several other local farming groups. At their booth, the SNAP farmers showed off…
-
Reporting on Water Quality Testing Methods in Western Kenya
Our paper about human sensory perceptions of water quality and the tools used to quantify bacterial load in water was recently published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. In January 2016, Shalean Collins, Patrick Mbullo, and Joshua Miller collected water samples at both the source and storage locations for numerous households in…
-
Undergrads Hard at Work During the Summer
Tracy and Julia, Northwestern undergraduates, are two of the students who have been hard at work this summer for the Young Research Group. Tracy and Julia have been focusing on data analyses for SNAP, our agro-ecological study in Tanzania, and HWISE, our global household water insecurity experiences scale development study, respectively. Stay tuned for their…
-
HWISE Study Gets a Home
We are proud to announce the creation of a new website for our Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) study. The site documents the history of the project, its scientific grounding, its scope (we are currently at 18 sites globally), and will be updated regularly to record our findings, achievements, and progress in scale implementation. We…
-
Perinatal Depression Among HIV-Infected Women in KwaZulu-Natal
Congrats to Emily Tuthill (center) and the team on the publication of our paper, which describes the role of maternal mental health in infant feeding practices among South African women. In this paper, we found that depression is associated with lower rates of exclusive breastfeeding. Indeed, we conclude that “Improving maternal psychosocial well-being could be a…
-
Dr. Beth Widen: A K99/R01 at UT Austin!
Dr. Beth Widen recently completed her post-doc and joined the University of Texas at Austin as a faculty member, where she is currently working on her NIH/NICHD K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award. She is currently a Research Scientist and will begin her tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Nutritional Sciences in August 2018. Dr.…
-
Dr. Young Speaks at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women
In March, Dr. Young had the honor of presenting her findings about the role of food insecurity and depression in women’s economic development at this year’s U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. She presented results from our Kenyan, Ugandan, and Tanzanian pregnant and postpartum cohorts. Dr. Young described a bidirectional relationships between food insecurity and…
