Inger Olaug Ottestad

Inger Olaug Ottestad serves as a Senior Lecturer in the Section for Clinical Nutrition at the University of Oslo's Faculty of Medicine. Her academic work centers on the critical intersection of nutrition and clinical care, with particular focus on cancer-related malnutrition and cachexia. She maintains an active research profile with numerous recent publications in high-impact journals.

Dr. Ottestad's research interests span cancer nutrition, malnutrition and cachexia, diet and cancer relationships, clinical nutrition practice, and interprofessional collaborative learning. Her work demonstrates a consistent focus on improving nutritional care for vulnerable patient populations, particularly those with cancer or elderly individuals experiencing malnutrition and frailty. She has contributed significantly to systematic reviews examining endpoints in cancer cachexia clinical trials, highlighting her leadership in establishing standardized assessment methods in this specialized field.

Her recent publications reveal a clear research trajectory focused on nutritional assessment in clinical settings, particularly regarding cancer cachexia, malnutrition diagnosis barriers, and nutritional interventions for specific populations including the elderly and postpartum women with obesity. Her work frequently appears in journals such as Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle, Clinical Nutrition Open Science, and Geroscience, indicating her strong standing in both oncology nutrition and geriatric nutrition research communities.

As an educator, Dr. Ottestad is responsible for a 4-week hospital internship and serves as course responsible for ERN4030: Advanced Clinical Nutrition 1. She also lectures on multiple courses including Introduction to Clinical Nutrition, Physiology and Medical Biochemistry, Preventive Nutrition, and Master's level clinical nutrition courses. She is actively involved in the SamPraks working group, which develops interprofessional collaborative learning across multiple healthcare disciplines including nutrition, pharmacy, medicine, dentistry, psychology, nursing, and theology.

Dr. Ottestad maintains active research collaborations with Oslo University Hospital, Norwegian School of Sports Sciences, NTNU, University of Tromsø, and University of Bergen, demonstrating her integration within Norway's broader healthcare research ecosystem. Her work on the QuaNuT study examining nutritional care for malnourished patients across multiple university hospitals highlights her commitment to improving clinical practice through evidence-based research.