Norge Jerome, Ph.D.

Norge Jerome, Ph.D.

In 1967, Dr. Norge Jerome joined KU Medical Center as a professor of preventive medicine, becoming the world’s first nutritional anthropologist. With training in clinical nutrition and cultural anthropology, Jerome played a pioneering role in the field for over four decades.

Jerome’s areas of research during her career included African American and Caribbean nutrition, the advertisement of children’s foods on TV, the relationship between food intake and human performance in Egypt, the diets of ambulatory cancer patients, and more. Her commitment to the advancement of nutritional anthropology led her to establish and serve as the first president of the Committee on Nutritional Anthropology, now known as the Council on Nutritional Anthropology, in 1974. From 1988 to 1992, she was responsible for programs in 46 countries as director of the Office of Nutrition at U.S. AID.

In 1995, Dr. Jerome retired from KU Medical Center as Professor Emeritus of Preventative Medicine and Public Health, only to return shortly after as the Associate Dean of Minority Health. During her three-year tenure, she developed an annual community health program addressing the population health needs of Nicodemus, Kansas.