Heather Wasser, PhD, is an assistant professor of nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and a faculty fellow at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG). Her work focuses on the development of behavioral interventions to promote optimal infant feeding practices, dietary intake, growth and child development. She is particularly interested in the bidirectional influences between infant behavior and the feeding practices of mothers and other caregivers, namely fathers and grandmothers. Her research seeks to advance behavioral interventions during the first 1,000 days of life through the application of complex theories of social support and cutting-edge design methodologies. 

As part of our FPG Faculty Fellow profile series, we recently spoke with Wasser to learn about her professional journey, what keeps her motivated, what she’s working on now, and what being a faculty fellow at FPG means to her. Here’s what she had to say.

Tell us about your professional journey--what led you to the work you do? 

I found my way to nutrition through a love of cooking and to nutrition for young children through my experience as the second oldest in a family of six kids and working in childcare and as a nanny while pursuing my college education. My passion for promoting breastfeeding, specifically, was sparked during my junior year of college when I took a lifecycle nutrition course—a course I now teach. 

Being a child of the 70s, the period during which breastfeeding rates were lowest in the U.S., I wasn’t breastfed nor were any of my siblings. We were all born 3-5 years apart so there was always a baby around and I was often responsible for helping care for and feed them, the latter always being commercial milk formula. It wasn’t until taking my lifecycle nutrition course where I learned about breastfeeding and its many health benefits for both mothers and babies. 

I took this course in 1997 when a “controversy” over a popular parenting magazine cover occurred. The star was featured breastfeeding her baby in a very demure way, yet there was enough public outrage that it was removed from the shelves and replaced with a cover of her simply holding her baby. These concurrent experiences also planted in me early seeds of feminism. Society felt it wasn’t OK to portray a woman doing something I just learned her body was designed to do—feed her baby—something beneficial for her, her baby, and now we know the planet as well, yet magazine covers displaying women in far less clothing and in objectified ways was acceptable. It was very transformative, and I’ve never thought about infant feeding the same since.

What are you working on right now? 

I have two principal research foci, one being the design and evaluation of behavioral nutrition interventions for families with young children and the other being methodological. 

In my intervention research, I focus on family-based interventions that incorporate education on infant behavior, such as “normal” cues, crying, and sleep behaviors, as we know these are strong drivers of perception of breastmilk supply, bottle-feeding behaviors, and child diet quality. I’m also working on interventions for families of young children with Down syndrome—hoping to expand to autism—as they are underrepresented in the nutrition intervention literature. Another focus area relates to water security and safe infant feeding during emergencies, with projects in the Galapagos and western NC after Hurricane Helene. 

Breastfeeding is a sustainable food system that produces half the CO2 emissions than commercial milk formula and doesn’t require access to potable water, an issue in low- and middle-income country settings and after climate-related disasters. As part of my early career K-award, I trained in the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) framework and have become expert in its application, now serving as the Co-I with expertise in MOST on four successfully funded R-level grants. MOST includes several experimental design options, frequently a factorial experiment with four or five components. Inspired by the field of engineering, MOST helps reduce “black box” experimentation, allowing researchers to estimate main effects of individual components as well as higher order interactions between components. We learn a lot more in a highly efficient manner before proceeding to evaluating a multi-component intervention in a randomized controlled trial (RCT). When our interventions tested through RCTs yield disappointing findings, we are limited in what we can do statistically to learn why it didn’t work and how best to move forward. 

"I love being part of a community that collectively wishes to improve the health and wellbeing of young children and their families. Understanding child development is central to understanding how to best feed young children. They go hand in hand."

What keeps you motivated in your work?

Improving the health of parents, babies, and the planet. Everyone should be able to make fully informed decisions about how they want to feed their child. Babies are big business in the U.S., and I see so many ways in which parents and caregivers are manipulated by manufacturers of commercial milk formula, the baby food industry and food industry at large, and social media. There are few things parents do more with their children than feed them and it’s a passion of mine to help feeding be less stressful and more rewarding and fun. I also recently learned there are more provisions for pets in U.S.-based emergency preparedness plans and policies than there are for pregnant women and babies! 

What do you find most challenging about your work?

In addition to marketing practices by multinational companies to promote commercial milk formula and ultra processed foods, the constant and seemingly growing misinformation about nutrition that exists in traditional and social media channels.

What does being an FPG Faculty Fellow mean to you? 

I love being part of a community that collectively wishes to improve the health and wellbeing of young children and their families. Understanding child development is central to understanding how to best feed young children. They go hand in hand.

Is there anything else you'd like our readers to know about your work?

Just that I would love to collaborate more with my FPG colleagues!