RIT professor leads groundbreaking international collaboration to improve nutrition and lifestyle health in Ghana

Rochester, New York – A chance encounter during a virtual networking session has opened new doors for international collaboration in public health nutrition, linking Rochester Institute of Technology’s Wegmans School of Health and Nutrition with researchers working on the ground in Ghana.

Associate Professor Brenda Abu, director of RIT’s nutritional sciences BS program, met Sandra Boatemaa Kushitor, a senior lecturer in public health nutrition at Ensign Global University in Kpong, Ghana, during an online symposium that connected academics from African countries. What began as a professional exchange soon evolved into a research partnership focused on understanding and improving health outcomes for communities living in urban slums in Accra, Ghana’s capital.

The collaboration has already taken shape through a pilot study funded by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, which supports partnerships between African-born scholars and universities in Africa. The study, carried out over the summer, is the first step toward developing targeted interventions to address lifestyle-related diseases, including diabetes and hypertension.

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For Abu, who was born and raised in Ghana, the project represents both a professional milestone and a personal mission. “Our goal is to come up with a technology-interfacing platform that can be useful to patients living with chronic diseases,” Abu said. “We are looking to address issues around nutrition and lifestyle, and taking a 360-degree perspective to holistically look at how their family life can be harnessed to prevent generational patterns of these diseases.”

The study focuses not only on the prevalence of chronic conditions but also on how people manage their health on a daily basis—how comfortable they are using mobile health apps or wearable devices, and the kinds of social and family support systems that influence their well-being. By combining data-driven insights with community perspectives, Abu and Kushitor hope to create a comprehensive picture of how lifestyle and environment shape disease management in low-resource settings.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York funds the fellowship program, which strengthens African higher education through collaborations like this one. Abu is no stranger to the program—this is her second fellowship award, and it continues to expand the reach of her research beyond the RIT campus.

Abu’s academic work has long centered on nutrition, women’s health, and disease prevention. Her research into iron-deficiency anemia among women and children in both Ghana and Rochester, N.Y., has informed her understanding of how cultural, economic, and technological factors intersect to affect health outcomes. Kushitor’s expertise complements Abu’s perfectly, with both scholars emphasizing the use of digital tools to track and improve lifestyle habits.

When the two met during an online event hosted by Loughborough University, they quickly realized how their interests aligned. “A priority for me was to make sure we have an ongoing relationship that can lead to cross learning and co-creating projects and ideas,” Abu said.

Through the fellowship, Abu has contributed to multiple aspects of academic and community engagement at Ensign Global University. She has helped review and enhance the school’s nutrition curriculum, mentored graduate students as they designed survey instruments and conducted interviews, and provided guidance on thesis development. The two professors are also co-mentoring a graduate student who is analyzing data gathered from the summer fieldwork for her master’s research.

The project reaches far beyond the university classroom. To ensure that the study reflects real community needs, Abu and Kushitor’s team collaborated closely with community health workers and nurses serving in the urban slum areas. They also organized focus groups with patients to gain firsthand insights into daily challenges and coping strategies related to chronic disease management.

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Even though Abu is based in the U.S., she maintained active involvement in every phase of the study. While she was in Ghana, her research assistant, Ayla Laro, a master’s student in RIT’s dietetics and nutrition program, coordinated efforts from Rochester. Laro helped design and distribute online surveys to Ghanaian health care professionals—an essential part of the final data collection process now underway.

Abu sees the partnership as a two-way learning experience. “We, ourselves, are dealing with non-communicable diseases here in Rochester, but also in the rest of the United States,” she said. “From this work, we will see if there are any lessons that we can learn or share based on what we have done so far.”

By bridging communities across continents, the research aims to build practical tools that can help people manage chronic illnesses in both Ghana and the U.S. The emphasis on technology-driven solutions, such as mobile tracking platforms and community-based support systems, offers a modern approach to tackling long-standing public health challenges.

For Abu, the collaboration underscores how academic partnerships can bring tangible benefits to people’s lives, far beyond university walls. What started as a single online meeting has now blossomed into a sustained effort to strengthen nutrition education, advance research, and improve health outcomes across two continents.

Through dedication, shared vision, and global cooperation, Abu and Kushitor are proving that impactful research knows no borders—and that when knowledge travels, lives can change with it.