Meet Ritah Tweheyo PhD Student

Ritah Tweheyo is a PhD Student from Uganda. She says:

I have a keen interest in nutrition and its impact on health of the population, especially women, which arose from my own experience in relation to food behaviours and weight influences. I am pursuing a PhD in Health Sciences having graduated with a first class Masters in Public Health- International Health from the University of Nottingham 2009/2010.

While in Uganda, I worked in the Northern districts transitioning from a 20-year long civil conflict, where I conducted project work focused at increasing access for women to HIV testing during pregnancy and linkage to treatment, as well as enhancing access for children under five with diarrhoea to oral rehydration therapy and nutritional supplements for malnourished children.

My PhD study, funded by the University of Hull Studentship, explores women’s eating behaviours and weight status in pregnancy. The rationale for the study results from gaps in the literature regarding interventions and research regarding maternal weight following pregnancy. Women naturally gain weight in pregnancy which may persist into the postpartum period and subsequently lead to maternal obesity later in life.

Whilst other factors for postpartum weight gain have been identified, what remains less clear is whether there is an alteration of food behaviours by women in pregnancy, which persists into the postpartum period, impacting not only on gestational weight gain but on postpartum weight retention and potentially on family food habits and practices.

Therefore this project seeks to explore the interrelations of food behaviours with weight status of pregnant women, comparing them with those never pregnant and postpartum, to understand women’s experiences of body image and societal influences on their perinatal engagement with food. The study is qualitative using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodology and drawing on aspects of discourse analysis.

Results from the study will be used to inform development of interventions to address the growing problem of maternal obesity both in the UK and internationally.