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Anthropologist Selected for Early Career Award

February 3, 2013

Anthropologist Selected for Early Career Award

Barbara Piperata, associate professor, anthropology, has been selected by the Human Biology Association (HBA) to receive the Michael A. Little Early Career Award for significant contributions to the field of human biology and the promise of future significant contributions. Faculty must be nominated for this award by at least two HBA fellows. Piperata will receive the award at the upcoming annual meeting of the HBA in April 2013.

Piperata’s research applies life history theory and takes a bio-cultural approach in understanding human ecology, reproduction and nutrition.

Piperata has been working in the eastern Amazon region since 2002. She has been studying growth and development, dietary intake, and physical activity patterns in rural communities experiencing the nutrition transition. In 2009, she conducted research on the impact of a conditional cash transfer program (Bolsa Família) on the nutritional status and dietary intakes of rural horticultural populations living in the eastern Amazon. The Bolsa Família program is the world’s largest conditional cash transfer program dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty and ending hunger among Brazil’s 44 million poorest citizens.

Currently, Piperata is working on two-year collaboration with Kammi Schmeer, assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State, to identify and address food insecurity and maternal-child malnutrition in León, Nicaragua. The project, funded in part by a grant from Ohio State’s Office of Outreach and Engagement, is rooted in local and community participation in León and the Centre for Demographic and Health Research (CIDS) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN).

Piperata and her team develop a 32-page survey, in Spanish, that was used in 500 households in León to assess food insecurity, as well as household demographics and economics, food consumption patterns, maternal and child health and child growth. Community social workers and nurses were enlisted and trained by Piperata and Schmeer to administer the surveys to the women and children of both rural and urban households. The surveys were conducted between July and the end of fall 2012.

The next phase of the project will begin in spring 2013 when Piperata and Schmeer return to Nicaragua with anthropology and sociology students. Piperata and her team of students and community social workers and nurses will spend three days with approximately 100 families collecting detailed data on food availability and distribution, maternal experiences and strategies for coping with food insecurity and the most critical barriers people face in accessing adequate food.

Piperata, Schmeer and their Nicaraguan collaborators will use these results to engage with local partners in research, learning and service to develop new evidence-based and locally-relevant solutions to food insecurity.

Piperata and Schmeer are faculty affiliates with the Ohio State’s Food Innovations Center.

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