Ardythe L. Morrow, PhD

Biography

Dr. Morrow received her MSc in nutrition from the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica (1980) and PhD in epidemiology from the University of Texas at Houston (1991). Since 1987 she has worked with colleagues in Mexico, Boston, and Houston on an NIH-funded program project on human milk immune protection against infectious disease.

She is currently professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center within the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She founded and directs the Center for Epidemiology and Biostatistics that has 35 faculty and staff and a multi-disciplinary Human Milk Research Program that includes clinical and basic science investigators in eight divisions.

She has published extensively on breastfeeding promotion and human milk protection against infectious diseases. Her primary focus is on protection by human milk glycans and protection against infectious disease, but she has expanded her research to understanding the relationship between breastfeeding and chronic diseases. She has been an ad hoc reviewer for NIH on breastfeeding research and a technical advisor for international breastfeeding policy and programs for Gates Foundation, UNICEF, and WHO, is on the editorial board of the Journal of Human Lactation and the journal of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. She is an elected member of the American Pediatric Society. She has over 100 publications, and is the primary author of the WHO monograph, Community-based Strategies for Breastfeeding Promotion and Support in Developing Countries (2004).

She has served as chair of the Milk Club of the (American) Society for Pediatric Research for the past four years. In 1997, she received a Young Investigator award from ISRHML for her randomized trial of breastfeeding support (Lancet, 1999). She was co-organizer of the 2002 ISRHML international meeting in Mexico and is co-editor of the book "Protecting Infants through Human Milk: Advancing the Scientific Evidence."