Dr. Wilna Oldewage-Theron is
AJFAND Author and Reviewer
and a FRIEND of AJFAND

She obtained a B.Sc (Dietetics) and Postgraduate Diploma in Hospital Dietetics from Pretoria University in South Africa in 1982 and 1983 respectively. She worked as a hospital dietitian for five years, a nutritional consultant for a pharmaceutical company for two years and as a dietitian for an industrial catering company for three years. She completed a diploma in purchasing management in 1993 and was then appointed as a purchasing manager for an industrial catering company and also later for an international hotel group. She decided to continue her studies in dietetics and enrolled for her B.Sc Honours degree at Potchefstroom University for CHE (PUCHE) in South Africa in 1995. She subsequently completed her M.Sc (dietetics) and Ph.D (dietetics) from PUCHE in 1998 and 2001 respectively. Her Ph.D studies focused on the evaluation of the fortification of sugar with vitamin A and tested the interaction between vitamin A and iron in adolescent girls during a clinical field trial. Wilna joined the Vaal Triangle Technikon in 1995 as a lecturer in Mass Catering, Nutrition and Research Methodology. She was appointed Head of Department: Hospitality and Tourism in 1999. She was the activity leader for the National Research Foundation (NRF) accredited research focus area entitled: Development of functional foods from 1999 to 2002. This focus area was subsequently extended and is now entitled: Addressing household food insecurity in an urban area, namely the Vaal Triangle. She is also the principal investigator of the Vaal Triangle Integrated Community-Based Nutrition Research Project amongst informal settlement dwellers. The major research question of this project is to what extent micro-mechanisms influence food, nutrition and health of the informal settlement dwellers in the Vaal Triangle area, of which the overall hypothesis is tested empirically against the UNICEF framework of the immediate, underlying and basic causes of malnutrition. She spent four months at the Universities of Westminster and Greenwich in London during 2002 to evaluate the baseline measurements of this project, and also to complete the situation analysis as part of her postdoctoral studies. During the past four years Wilna published five articles in scientific journals and presented papers at various national and international conferences. She is at present the promoter for five doctoral- and one postdoctoral students. She successfully completed the supervision of one doctoral and three masters students. Wilna became a reviewer for the AJFAND in 2002. Her research interests include community nutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and household food security.