Melissa Melby is co-ordinator of population health initiatives at the University of Delaware’s College of Health Sciences.

A biological/medical anthropologist, she has training in chemistry, nutritional epidemiology and environment and development (geography). Her research examines the ways in which environmental factors – broadly conceived to include physical, biological and socio-cultural influences – interact with human development to result in population differences in health. Much of her research has focused on Japan as a comparative case for ‘western’ models of women’s health and maternal and child health.

Melby began conducting research on menopause and midlife in Japan as a window to understanding how cultural and biological factors such as diet and the microbiome influence the human life course. The results led her to expand her research program to encompass a broader developmental window (ranging from prenatal and early infancy to later childhood and adulthood), as well as a broader concept of the salient environment.