Dr. Harriët Jager-Wittenaar

Harriët Jager-Wittenaar, PhD, RD, is a professor of Malnutrition and Healthy Aging within the Healthy Aging, Allied Health Care and Nursing research group. Her research programme focuses on the prevention and treatment of malnutrition in the chronically ill and the elderly. The research programme is a close collaboration with, among others, the UMCG, to which Dr. Jager-Wittenaar is also affiliated as a senior researcher at the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. The main themes within the research programme are: screening and nutritional assessment (including measuring body composition), the relationship between malnutrition and frailty, and nutrition and exercise as combined interventions to combat malnutrition and sarcopenia.

Dr. Jager-Wittenaar is co-programme leader of the SIA SPRONG program FAITH research (www.faithresearch.nl), a learning community in which knowledge institutions, (care) organizations and companies jointly develop and share knowledge to counteract vulnerability among different target groups in the northern region. 

Dr. Jager-Wittenaar is a popular speaker nationally and internationally. From 2017 – 2021 she led the European Specialist Dietetic Network on Older Adults within the European Federation of Associations of Dietitians (EFAD) and has led the EFAD-ESPEN Working Group within EFAD since 2021. She is also a member of the international Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) Vlidation and Testing Working Group. She is also co-developer of the ESPEN LLL Course Nutrition Support in Cancer. Since 2018, Dr. Jager-Wittenaar is a Movement and Rehabilitation Fellow at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.