Swetha Manohar, RD PhD

Fellow
People

Swetha Manohar, RD PhD is a Fellow at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and holds a joint appointment with the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s (JHSPH) Department of International Health, at Johns Hopkins University. She is part of the Global Food Ethics and Policy Program’s faculty where she works on the program’s upcoming research, specifically the ‘Realism of Healthy, Sustainable Diets in Southeast Asia’ and ‘Rural Deprivation and Food Insecurity’ studies.

Previously, Swetha was Project Scientist for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab and led JHU research and capacity building initiatives in Nepal for the project’s activities from 2011-2015. She continues to serve as a Co-Investigator and is part of the core research team for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Nutrition-Asia.

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Prior to her work in Nepal, she provided research support to the Alive & Thrive program in Viet Nam while working with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Ministerial Leadership Initiative (MLI), the Interactions of Malnutrition & Enteric Infections: Consequences for Child Health and Development’ (MAL-ED) study and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Swetha is a Registered Dietitian and between 2006-2009, worked as a Clinical Dietitian at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center providing medical nutrition therapy to a varied inpatient and outpatient population.

Her research primarily focuses on community-based and policy-level approaches to improve nutrition and food security in low and middle income countries. Specifically, she conducts research on:  (1) child growth – factors influencing growth as well as short- and long-term consequences of impaired growth (2) determinants of disparities in food insecurity and undernutrition among women and children and multi-sectoral interventions to address these disparities and; (3) conceptualizing and contextualizing equitable, ethical, and sustainable diets and food systems for LMIC.

Research Interests

  • child growth – factors influencing growth as well as short- and long-term consequences of impaired growth
  • determinants of disparities in food insecurity and undernutrition among women and children and development of multi-sectoral interventions to address these disparities
  • conceptualizing and contextualizing equitable, ethical, and sustainable diets and food systems for LMIC
  • intersection of human rights and food security

Education

  • PhD, International Health (Human Nutrition), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
  • MSPH, International Health (Human Nutrition), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
  • RDN, Graduate Coordinated Program in Dietetics, University of Maryland, College Park
  • BSc in Human Nutrition, University of Massachusetts, Amherst