Current Research and Scholarly Interests
Dr. Lambrecht's research aims to address malnutrition and environmental degradation from two angles: (1) evaluating climate-resilient agricultural strategies to improve global food security, nutrition, and health, and (2) assessing approaches to promote consumption of healthy and sustainable diets.
Climate-resilient agriculture for human health: Across various countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, Dr. Lambrecht investigates small-scale crop and livestock agroecology as a win-win strategy to benefit human nutrition, the environment, and households’ resilience to climate change. Her current work aims to understand whether integrated crop-livestock rearing can buffer the potential negative impacts of climate shocks on children's growth in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi, and Uganda. During her PhD, Dr. Lambrecht examined linkages between household livestock ownership and anemia in children in southern Ghana, investigating the hypothesis that rearing livestock could alleviate anemia by providing a source of micronutrient-rich animal-source foods, yet could also exacerbate anemia by exposing children to zoonotic pathogens. Dr. Lambrecht has also worked on a large-scale homestead food production trial in Bangladesh, examining impacts on agricultural production, and children's and women's diets and health.
Healthy and sustainable diets: Shifting diets towards sustainable and healthy plant-forward dietary patterns is essential for mitigating climate change, reducing biodiversity loss and habitat destruction, and reducing non-communicable chronic diseases. Dr. Lambrecht is a lead researcher of the NURISHD (NURsing home and hospital food service – Implementation of Healthy and Sustainable Diets) study. This research project examines the environmental footprint and nutritional quality of food service in German healthcare institutions and evaluates the feasibility of shifting dietary patterns toward the Planetary Health Diet.
