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I am a Public Health Nutrition trainer and researcher with a PhD in Human Nutrition, (UoN, CARTA PhD Fellowship) MSc. Applied Human Nutrition (UoN) and Bachelor of Education (Home Economics, Kenyatta University). I am currently a Senior Lecturer and HOD at the Department of Public and Global Health and CARTA Focal Person at the University of Nairobi (UoN). I also provide technical support to East Africa Kidney Institute of the UoN, Kenya Ministry of Health’s Nutrition Technical committees and Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) and a member of St Paul’s University Research Ethics Review Committee in Kenya. As a researcher my areas of interest are maternal and child nutrition, nutrition in chronic disease conditions, food security, Health promotion in schools, Nutrition and One Health and Mixed Methods research. I have more than 25 publications in peer reviewed scientific journals, and two book chapters available via: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=uQDS2xwAAAAJ and my ORCID link: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9967-5432.
Current Community Engagement Project
My current project is “Co-creation of local food-based renal diet recipes for people living with chronic kidney disease (CKD)”. It aims at improving dietary prescription adherence among patients with CKD for better clinical outcomes and quality of life. The project responds to identified gaps in nutritional management for patients with CKD on hemodialysis by engaging the community to find solutions to non-adherence to renal diet. The co-creation will involve participatory development of favourite food recipes that are contextually flexible and sensitive to renal patients’ food preferences, cultural needs, and disease specific nutritional requirements. Rooted in participatory action research design, the project engages patients, family caregivers and nutrition professionals/health care providers in Nairobi and Eldoret to co-design nutrition interventions that incorporate experiences of patients and caregivers. Since inception in January 2025, the project has successfully shared the project ideas and plans with key stakeholders at the National and County/Project facility levels, with a total attendance of 20 participants who fully supported the proposed project idea. Their valuable inputs were incorporated in the project to improve the implementation process. They proposed formation of a technical advisory committee and submission of the protocol to Ethics Review Board for approval to use hospital records to recruit project participants.
