Dr. Jackson, selected for banner

Department honored to have their current chair recognized for research excellence

The banner was placed outside of Symons Hall

Image Credit: Sara Kao

February 8, 2013

Our department is honored to have our chair, Dr. Jackson,  selected for a banner along campus  drive outside Symons hall. He was given this honor as a result of his past excellence in research.

Dr. Jackson is an International Nutritionist. He received his PhD form Cornell University, our country’s premiere international nutrition training program.

On the international level, Dr. Jackson has been involved with numerous studies of anemia prevalence and etiology. He has performed studies, both alone and with his doctoral students, in such diverse countries as Senegal, Liberia, Tanzania, and Egypt in Africa; Lebanon, Kuwait, and Egypt in the Middle East; and in Jamaica in the Caribbean. Dr. Jackson has over 60 journal articles and consulting reports on anemia. These studies have lead Dr. Jackson to make recommendations that are consonant with his original goal of becoming an academic (help solve prevalent nutrition problems). Recommendations were made to various organizations he has consulted for, including USAID (Egypt), the World Health Organization (Kuwait), Caribbean (PAHO), and the World Bank (Guinea).

In Egypt and Kuwait his research has been used to formulate policies that are designed to improve the health and nutritional status of those populations. In both 1991 and 1994 and then again in 1998, he was a USAID consultant to the Egyptian Government on how to reduce anemia. For 4 months in 1997,he was a USAID World Women-in-Development Fellow with the mission of assisting Egypt to develop a large applied nutrition program to reach 10 million adolescent girls in Upper Egypt, the most impoverished area of Egypt. After 4 months of continuous meetings and investigations, Dr. Jackson submitted his report to USAID and the Ministry of Health of the Egyptian Government. In 2001, the Egyptian Government, with USAID financial backing, launched a program of nutrition education, providing medications to deworm adolescent girls, and supplementation to 10 million girls in Upper Egypt. This program is still ongoing and official accounts, both from USAID and Egyptian Government officials, is that it is “a part of the most successful USAID public health nutrition program in the world”.