Zandile Mchiza is an obesity, nutrition and non-communicable disease research specialist. She joined the School of Public Health (SoPH) in January 2018, where she convenes the Descriptive Epidemiology Course at Post Graduate level and organizes the Non-Communicable Disease Research Cluster for the School.

Prior to joining the SoPH she was a Senior Research Specialist and a Senior Specialist Scientist at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) of South Africa, respectively. In these research councils she led and collaborated in projects directed at improving and preventing nutritional disorders, body size and image distortion as well as metabolic diseases in South Africa and other African countries. Her other contributions to science have been capacity development (especially developing research skills of previously disadvantaged young scientists). She also represented the Public Health Nutrition (Cambridge Core) Journal as an Associate Editor; and sat in the panel committees for Research Career Development organized by the National Research Foundation (NRF), the MRC and the NIH (Fogarty Initiative). More recently, her interests are reviewing food-, nutrition- and health-related legislations and policy documents to identify the key legislation and policy adoption and delivery challenges, as well as trace their implementation processes, in order to find workable solutions to advise legislation and policy amendments. All this work is directed at safeguarding the health and nutrition status of the South African public.

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