Prof. Richmond Nii Okai Aryeetey
Prof. Richmond Nii Okai Aryeetey a Public Health Nutritionist and a leading scientist and researcher in Nutrition. He holds a PhD in Human Nutritional Sciences from Iowa State University, Iowa, USA, as well as a Master of Public Health and B.Sc. in Nutrition and Food Science degrees, both from the University of Ghana, Legon.
He joined the Population, Family and Reproductive Health Department, School of Public Health, the University of Ghana as a Lecturer in 2007. In 2012 He was promoted to Senior Lecturer Prior to that in 2010 he assumed the position of Head of the Department of Biostatistics, University of Ghana School of Public Health in 2013. He became the Project Manager of the University of Ghana’s Research Project on Building capacity for sustainable livelihoods and health through public-private linkages in agriculture and health systems in 2014.
By dint of hard work, he rose to the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health Department, University of Ghana School of Public Health in 2017 and continues to be very heavily involved in the training of students in Bachelor, Masters and Doctoral programs.
As a Nutrition Scientist of international repute, he has shown leadership in research, extension, policy development and training of Public Health Specialists. His work on infant and young child feeding policy research in Ghana led to the determination of barriers in infant and young child feeding policy and programs in Ghana. He assessed the national capacity to scale up breastfeeding across 8 indicators: Advocacy, Political Will, Funding and Resources, Policies and Legislation, Training and Program Delivery, Promotion, Research and Evaluation, and Coordination and Monitoring. His leadership has been recognized in the application of innovative social media technology to promote breastfeeding messages to breastfeeding women in Ghana. He also identified gaps in the implementation of the National Baby-Friendly Hospital’s Initiative (BFHI) program and tested interventions for improving the quality of complementary feeding of young children’s diets.
He has shown further leadership in nutrition policy and program development in Ghana and globally. He has also served on several national and international nutrition policy activities. These include the drafting of the National Nutrition Policy for Ghana; National Salt Iodization Strategy III for Ghana; Convenor of the Research and Capacity Development Working Group of the Scaling Up Nutrition Cross-Sectoral Planning Group in Ghana; Co-Chair, the World Health Organization’s Global Complementary Feeding Guidelines Development Group; Co-Chair, the ‘Evidence-informed Decision making in Health and Nutrition initiative, aimed at improving the use of evidence to inform decisions in nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa.
Professor Richmond Nii Okai Aryeetey, on the strength of his scholarship and contribution to knowledge creation in the field of nutrition, was elected to Fellowship of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences on 16 June 2022.
