معرفی
Sera Young is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She holds a PhD from Cornell University (2008), an MA in Medical Anthropology from the University of Amsterdam, and completed an HIV Fellowship at the University of California San Francisco. Her research spans medical anthropology, nutrition science, and global health, with particular focus on water and food insecurity in low-resource settings.
Dr. Young's research interests center on water insecurity, food insecurity, and pica (non-food cravings), with particular attention to maternal and child health in the first 1000 days. She developed the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) and Individual Water Insecurity Experiences (IWISE) scales, which have been implemented in at least 50 countries by more than 100 governmental, policy, research, and civil organizations. Her work takes a biocultural approach to understanding how mothers in low-resource settings cope to preserve their health and that of their families, particularly in contexts of HIV.
Recent publications demonstrate a clear trend toward measuring and understanding the connections between water insecurity and food insecurity, with research spanning multiple continents including Africa, Latin America, Australia, and high-income settings. Her work has evolved from developing measurement tools to examining the health, mental health, and social consequences of water insecurity, with increasing attention to gender disparities, climate change impacts, and policy applications.
- 2022 Norman Kretchmer Memorial Award in Nutrition and Development, American Society for Nutrition
- 2019 Carnegie Fellowship
- 2013 Margaret Mead Award, American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology
- 2009 Dissertation Award, Society for Medical Anthropology
- 2009 Allan Rosenfield Scholar, New Investigator in Global Health, Global Health Council
- 2003 Rudolf Virchow Award, Honorable Mention, American Anthropological Association
- 2002 Christine Wilson Award, American Anthropological Association
Dr. Young serves on numerous committees including as Chair of the Global Nutrition Council (2020-2022) for the American Society for Nutrition, Executive Committee for the Institute for Policy Research (2021-present), and Tenure & Promotion Committee for Global Health Studies (2017-present). She teaches courses including "Water insecurity: anthropological and global health perspectives," "Ecology of infant feeding," and "Turning your numbers into a story," and also teaches through the Northwestern Prison Education Program. Her research group has secured significant funding for global water and food insecurity research, with findings directly influencing policy through organizations like WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme.
Dr. Young leads the Young Research Group which has established the Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales as a global standard for measuring water access and use. The WISE Research Coordination Network collaborates with scholars worldwide to expand the application of these scales across diverse settings and to investigate the human consequences of water insecurity. Recent work has focused on validating the scales in high-income settings and examining intersections with mental health, climate change, and food security.
