Mandy Belfort, MD, MPH

Mandy Brown Belfort, MD MPH is a practicing neonatologist and Associate Chief of Research in the Department of Pediatrics at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She leads an NIH-funded research program focused on the influence of early-life diet on health outcomes in preterm-born children, with an emphasis on the NICU hospitalization as a critical window of opportunity for effective interventions. She conducts observational and interventional studies and uses innovative measures of nutritional status including neuroimaging-based indicators of brain development. She has also led collaborative epidemiological research indicating long-lasting neurodevelopmental benefits of maternal milk-based diets in very preterm-born children. Dr. Belfort’s work has been published widely in peer-reviewed journals and informs public health recommendations and policies related to breastfeeding and clinical nutritional approaches within neonatal intensive care.