Pakistan Nutrition and Dietetic Society | Dr.Salma H Badruddin, PhD Nutrition(USA)

Dr.Salma H Badruddin, PhD Nutrition(USA)

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Masters in Nutrition in Home Economics 1964

PhD Nutrition (USA)

Consultant Nutritionist,Ex-Professor Nutrition at Community Health and Nutrition Dept.AKU

Honorary Life President, PNDS

Achievements :

PhD on Ford foundation scholarship —- University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Peace Scholarship for her efforts at creating an understanding of Islam and Pakistan by giving talks at various forums
Elected for the National Honor Society Omicron NU for being a straight A student
Founding members of Pakistan Nutrition and Dietetic Society (PNDS)
Honorary Life President of PNDS
Asian Dietetic Award Winner 2018

Professional Experiences:

Her professional life enabled her to travel to many places to attend conferences to present research papers or as invited speaker.
As these trips were funded by the Donor agencies that funded the research such as the Harvard Institute of Development, organizers of the Conferences and also by Aga Khan University they were much more fun to enjoy!

Career Story:

She started teaching at College of Home Economics and in 1968 she went on a scholarship to the US for PhD.

The purpose of the scholarship was after coming back that she will start more specialized programs in Nutrition. Unfortunately while she was doing her PhD ,CHE was nationalized and when she came back in 1972, she found that she had been transferred to Urdu College for Women.

Then she got a job as a USAID Consultant. While she was working there, she met Dr Camer Villani at some dinner who was the Dean of AKUH at that time and when he found out that she is a PhD in Nutrition, he offered her to start teaching at nursing section currently and after the medical students. The very next day after the meeting with Dr Villani, she received a call from a lady who told her that Dr has referred her so that she can start her private practice at home and she succeeded.

During her time at AKU, several CHE students came to her who worked on their master’s thesis and some of them suggested that there should be a nutrition society for the progression of this profession. She told one of them, Fatima Bharmal that if she could find 20 students then a nutrition society can be started. At that time Dr Rubina Hakeem has also completed her Phd in Nutrition and came back to CHE, and together with Ms Shabana Pervaiz,Nilofer Safdar, Ayesha Khan, Deneize Puri, Shabnum Kassamali, Faiza Riaz,Sadia Zubair founded the nutrition society named PNDS in 2003.

From a small beginning, PNDS has grown up so much and now recognized at International level being at ICDA as representative society of Pakistan.

She mentioned “Thanks to Dr Camar Villani vision that I was appointed as a faculty in a medical college and got the freedom to work with a curriculum committee to make nutrition part of medical curriculum. Dr Villani once said to her “I have appointed you and it’s up to you to make a place of nutrition in medical curriculum and even though you are in a department of medicine ,feel free to work with anyone in other departments who are interested in nutrition so as a result she did several research projects with the department of medicine , pediatrics surgery and gynae.

Travel Experiences: