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Maria N. Garcia-Casal, PhD, RDN

Scientist
World Health Organization
Genève 27, Geneve, Switzerland

María Nieves García-Casal is Scientist of the Food and Nutrition Actions in Health Systems Unit, Department of Nutrition and Food Safety of the World Health Organization. With 20+ years of experience in nutrition and food sciences, her main area of expertise is in micronutrients research, anaemia, micronutrients deficiencies and food fortification programmes and micronutrient laboratory methods.

Dr Garcia-Casal is a senior expert in nutritional sciences with extensive international experience in vitamin and mineral interventions and broad expertise on state-of-the-art laboratory methods for micronutrient nutrition assessment, including haematological tests, in vitro absorption of microelements, handling of radioisotopes, protein determinations, HPLC, chemical and biochemical analysis of food, microbiological and immunoradiometric assays for folate determination in serum and blood. She is a leader with strong research background and broad knowledge of epidemiological aspects of monitoring and evaluation of food fortification programs, cross-sectional surveys in micronutrients, expertise in applied and operational research of micronutrients, and excellent project and stakeholders management skills. She has authored more than 190 scientific articles in peer review journals, book chapters, Cochrane systematic reviews of interventions, diagnostic accuracy tests reviews and overview of reviews.

Maria Nieves understands and applies the functions that represent the core of the World Health Organization work in nutrition through setting priorities for nutrition actions; supporting the development of evidence-informed guidance; advocating for the importance of nutrition for health; and ensuring access to guidance through publication, dissemination and specialized technical support to countries to translate this guidance into action.

At the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety she is currently leading the development of updated recommendations for biomarkers of iron nutrition in populations, retrieving, summarizing and assessing the evidence to inform guidelines for measuring iron status and anaemia in populations.

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