Maternal Dietary Diversity in Mumbai

The Harvard Chan India Research Center supported student engagement for Ms Melinda Mastan, MPH Candidate ’25, in India, in August 2024. Melinda was a student in Health and Social Behavior at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, concentrating in Nutrition and Global Health. Her research interests lie at the intersection of nutrition and behavior change. For her summer practicum, she had the opportunity to work with SNEHA Mumbai (Society for Nutrition, Education, and Health Action) over the period of 3 months virtually from June to August 2024; and in Mumbai for 2 weeks in August.

She contributed to research on maternal dietary diversity and its impact on child eeding practices in informal settlements in Mumbai. Melinda was responsible for secondary data analysis and development of a manuscript that reports on uncovering positive associations between maternal minimum dietary diversity (MDD) and children’s MDD and provided recommendations for maternal and child health (MCH) interventions based on these findings. Additionally, she was leading formative research, designing and conducting focus group discussions with mothers about a maternal and child health AI Chatbot initiative being scaled up by SNEHA. These projects are expected to provide the evidence-base for designing SNEHA’s MCH intervention.

Melinda’s experience with SNEHA provided valuable insights into data collection and utilization for intervention design in India and enhanced her research skills, which will be crucial as she advances in her career and continues her education in the field.