Aneth Vedastus Kalinjuma is a Research Scientist at the Chronic Disease Clinic of Ifakara (CDCI) within Ifakara Health Institute. With over 17 years of experience in research design, survey development, data collection, management, and analysis, she possesses a strong statistical background to her role.

Since joining Ifakara in October 2014, Aneth has focused on data management and statistical analysis for the Kilombero and Ulanga Antiretroviral Cohort (KIULARCO), embedded in the HIV care and treatment center at St. Francis Referral Hospital in Ifakara, Morogoro, Tanzania. Her contribution has been pivotal to various research studies using the KIULARCO database to understand HIV infection patterns in rural Tanzania. Prior to her role at Ifakara, Aneth served as a Research Officer (Statistics) at the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre in the Department of Nutrition Policy and Planning (2007-2014).

Aneth is trained in anthropometric measurements for children under five (weight and height), nutrition assessment and surveillance, food and nutrition security monitoring, evaluation, impact assessment, and infectious disease modeling. Additionally, she is skilled in using various statistical analysis platforms, including Stata, SAS, R, and SPSS.

Her educational background includes a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from the University of Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania, and a Master’s in Statistics with a focus on Biostatistics from Hasselt University, Belgium. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Witwatersrand, School of Public Health, South Africa. In 2019, she was awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health under Prof. Wafaie W. Fawzi, focusing on nutrition and pediatric infectious diseases through the Global Infectious Diseases (GID) training program, sponsored by the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) Fogarty International Center. She also received a five-year Ph.D. fellowship in 2020 from the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA).

Aneth’s research interests include HIV, TB, nutrition outcomes in children under five and adults, malaria infection during pregnancy, and related pregnancy outcomes. Her work explores key topics such as loss to follow-up among HIV-infected individuals enrolled in HIV care and treatment centers, trends in body mass index among HIV-infected persons on antiretroviral treatment, vitamin D and pregnancy outcomes, and placental malaria outcomes in pregnant women.

Over the years, Aneth has applied her expertise in notable projects, including consulting for SADC in 2014 on a technical review of the Guidance Paper on integrating Nutrition, HIV, and Gender into Vulnerability Assessment Analysis (VAA) in South Africa. She also contributed to sample size estimation and analyzed data for the Nutrition Coverage Survey in Tanzania's Lindi and Shinyanga regions and trained data collectors for the 2015 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey/Malaria Indicator Survey.

Aneth is a regular member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) and an active member of the Kilombero and Ulanga Antiretroviral Cohort (KIULARCO) study group and has served on its scientific board since 2016. She has co-authored eight articles in international journals, primarily focusing on data management and analysis. You can view her research profile here.