University of Cape Coast

Prof. (Mrs.) Christiana Naa Atsreh Nsiah-Asamoah
Active

Prof. (Mrs.) Christiana Naa Atsreh Nsiah-Asamoah

Associate ProfessorSenior Membercbuxton@ucc.edu.gh

I am a registered Nutritionist who has great passion for maternal, adolescent and child nutritional issues in developing countries. I am also interested in the Nutrition Education of students who are being trained to become health professionals.In the past 15 years, I have been actively involved in studies that have focused on community-based nutritional issues among vulnerable groups as such infants, young children, women of child-bearing age and adolescents in Ghana. My research has been focused on exploring individual, maternal, household and community-level factors that influence the feeding and nutritional status of infants and young children in poor-resourced districts. I have been actively involved in conducting studies to assess the impact of School Feeding Programmes on the dietary intakes of school children through the Tailoring Food Sciences to Endogenous Patterns of Local Food Supply for Future Nutrition (TELFUN) project. With my background in Education, I have collaborated with a team of Researchers from Ghana, South Africa, Bangladesh and India to study the impact of child undernutrition on access to basic education in the Consortium for Educational Access, Transitions and Equity (CREATE) project funded and supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), The Centre for International Education, University of Sussex and The Institute of Education, University of London, UK. I have also collaborated with Researchers in the Netherlands to access the contribution of the Ghana School feeding programme to Micronutrient Adequacy of Ghanaian Schoolchildren in Northern Ghana. I have also undertaken studies that assessed Ghanaian adolescents and young adults (university students) dietary practices which have formed the basis for developing nutrition education interventions tailored toward meeting their nutritional needs. I have led various studies that have focus on evaluating the nutritional knowledge of health students and professionals to guide curriculum reforms in the discipline of nutrition, a vital aspect of their training. My studies have also focused on examining the dietary intakes and practices of some neglected vulnerable groups such as commercial long-distance drivers, health professionals and students’ sports men and women. I have collaborated with Researchers in the field of ICT education to conduct a study on mobile phones facilitation of health promotion and disease prevention information among health science students. The findings served as an ‘eye-opener’ for health educators and mobile service providers concerning factors that should be taken into consideration when framing health messages to attract health students. With my background in Food Science, I have also collaborated on projects that have focused on improving the nutritional composition of staple and indigenous foods such as sorghum, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, Indian Almond and African Locust Beans by employing food processing techniques and principles.