Board Members
MARIA ANTONIA GUILLERMO-TUAZON Director, Institute of Human Nutrition and Food , UPLB
Dr. Ma. Antonia Guillermo-Tuazon is concurrently the Director of the Institute of Human Nutrition and Food , UPLB(IHNF) and the Regional Training Programme on Food and Nutrition Planning (RTP-FNP) of the College of Human Ecology (CHE) at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). A registered nutritionist-dietitian and Professor of Nutrition, she is also a former dean of said college. Dr. Tuazon has had extensive academic training. She pursued her baccalaureate and master’s degrees in Community Nutrition and Food and Nutrition Planning, respectively, at UPLB, after which she earned her doctorate degree in Human Nutrition at the Wageningen Agricultural University, the Netherlands. She later took up postgraduate training in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the John Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, USA. Her broad range of experience in instruction, operations-oriented research, training and extension on issues dealing with food and nutrition program planning and management, nutritional assessment, maternal and child nutrition, food and nutrition systems, gender analysis, economics of nutrition interventions and issues dealing with household food security and poverty alleviation programs and their impact on nutrition and promotion of growth with equity earned her 44 publications, three policy papers, and numerous other papers/posters presented in various fora here and abroad.
As a nutritionist par excellence and highly respected expert, Dr. Tuazon is a well-sought technical expert in the Philippines and abroad in various areas of nutrition and dietetics, particularly in various aspects of food and nutrition program management. She has served as country technical adviser to Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India upon the request of international organizations like Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO-UN), World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank either to assist in the formulation of National Plans of Action for Nutrition (NPAN) or development and operationalization of National Nutrition Programs like the Bangladesh Integrated Nutrition Program. Moreover, she has also been invited as referee for international and local journals. Armed with solid working knowledge in developing courses and/or revising curricular offerings, she has conducted in-country review of course offerings in at least eight countries in Asia and in Iran.
At some point she also became the lone academe representative in the International Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information Mapping Systems (FIVIMS) network. For the Philippines, one of her major contributions was the commissioned work she did for UNICEF and Asian Development Bank (ADB) on comprehensive assessment of nutrition interventions done in the Philippines. This important work has provided valuable information in the formulation of Country Program of Children by UNICEF and has been cited in international publications
Apart from her body of works in nutrition, she is also well recognized for her work on Maternal Energy Requirements of Pregnant and Lactating Filipino women. This work remains a major and important work on this subject and has been the basis for the Philippine RDA for 1989 and 2002 Recommended Energy and Nutrient Intakes of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI).
Twenty-five years of exemplary service has given Dr. Tuazon her share of awards and recognition. To name a few, she was awarded a full Netherlands Universities Foundation for International Cooperation (NUFFIC) PhD fellowship and was also honored as Most Outstanding Dutch Fellow for Human Nutrition. She had been the recipient of a CHE-UPLB Outstanding Alumna Award and was honored as Philippine Association of Nutrition (PAN) Fellow for Nutrition Administration. In 2004 she was named Outstanding Nutritionist-Dietitian of the Year by the Nutritionists-Dietitians Association of the Philippines (NDAP) and the Outstanding Professional in Nutrition and Dietetics by the Professional Regulation Commission of the Government of the Philippines. The following year she was included among the Ten Outstanding Nutritionist-Dietitian of the Decade and was selected as an Outstanding Nutritionist-Dietitian for Education and Research.
Updated: 26 Jul 2007
