Dr. Kathryn (Kay) Dewey is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Department of Nutrition and the Institute for Global Nutrition. Dr. Dewey joined the faculty at UC Davis in 1980 and was a co-founder of the Program in International Nutrition in 1987, which is now the Institute for Global Nutrition. She served as its Director from 2007 to 2018. Dr. Dewey took emeritus status in 2018 but remains active in research and professional service. Her research focuses on maternal and child nutrition in vulnerable populations, with an emphasis on preventing malnutrition during the first 1000 days.
Dr. Dewey’s interest in nutrition began during her doctoral training in biology, which included a focus on human ecology. She conducted her doctoral research in southern Mexico, where she evaluated how the transformation from subsistence to commercial agriculture affected child nutrition. This initial work, along with her personal experiences raising two children as a young faculty member, led to a fascination with maternal and infant nutrition that shaped the rest of her career. After conducting numerous cohort studies and randomized trials in the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, and Peru, she shifted her focus to Africa and South Asia, where rates of child malnutrition were highest.
Dr. Dewey’s research has centered on nutritional issues during pregnancy and lactation, infant and young child feeding, child growth patterns, and micronutrient status and anemia. She greatly values collaborating across disciplines, which has contributed to her appreciation of the intersection between nutrition and child development, the microbiome, immune function, physical activity, and economic issues. During the past 20 years, her work has focused on interventions to prevent maternal and child undernutrition, particularly stunting, wasting and micronutrient deficiencies. In a series of studies with collaborators in Ghana, the most effective approach for infants was identified as “home fortification” with small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements (SQ-LNS). The next step was completing additional randomized trials to evaluate the effects of both maternal and child SQ-LNS, together with collaborators in numerous countries including Ghana, Malawi, Burkina Faso and Bangladesh. The rapid expansion of the evidence on SQ-LNS made it possible to conduct several meta-analyses documenting efficacy and effectiveness. In recent years, Dr. Dewey has participated in the secretariat for the SQ-LNS Task Force, which is facilitating efforts to scale-up child SQ-LNS in high-risk populations. In addition to ongoing research, Dr. Dewey stays busy providing professional service to WHO, FAO, the World Bank and other organizations. It’s one reason she does not describe herself as “retired”!
Dr. Dewey lives in Davis with her husband, and enjoys spending time outdoors, cooking (and eating!), and visiting their two sons and family members throughout the country.