Dr. Rajavel Elango is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, and School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is also an Investigator at the Research Institute, BC Children's Hospital.
Dr. Rajavel Elango’s research program focuses on the identification of dietary requirements for protein and amino acids, and protein quality of foods during key stages of growth and development, such as pregnancy and in childhood malnutrition using state-of-the-art stable isotope techniques. His research also focuses on disease/inborn errors of metabolism, and how non-invasive stable isotope based techniques can be used as diagnostic tools to measure effectiveness of new treatment and management modalities.
Dr. Elango is a Deputy Editor (Reviews) for the British Journal of Nutrition, and a Section Editor for the Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care. He is a member of the American Society for Nutrition and Canadian Nutrition Society.
Dr. Elango was the recipient of the 2013 Vernon R. Young International Award for Amino Acid research from the American Society for Nutrition. Dr. Elango was part of the United Nations - Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2014 Expert Working Group on methods to assess protein quality of foods, and the FAO 2017 Expert Working Group on “Protein Quality Assessment in Follow-up Formula for Young Children and Ready to use Therapeutic Foods.
Malnutrition in Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs) leads to prolonged and costly hospitalization. The lack of standardized screening and diagnosis protocols across institutions remains a challenge. This retrospective analysis of 8,725 PICU admissions in the United States of America from 2011-2019 highlight the importance of optimizing malnutrition screening, diagnosis, and treatment protocols.