Hi, I'm Swetha Raju — the patient and researcher behind NephroNourish.

I started here the way a lot of my readers do — with a diagnosis, a confusing food list, and not enough answers. Being diagnosed with CKD at six years old made nutrition less of a lifestyle choice and more of a survival skill. By the time I started my master's in clinical nutrition at Columbia, I already knew what it felt like to be on the wrong end of the research-to-plate gap. NephroNourish was built to close that distance.

NephroNourish is where my clinical and research work lives — peer-reviewed publications, video abstracts (short, visual summaries of my research), peer reviewer across nephrology, nutrition, and chronic and autoimmune disease journals, and one-on-one nutrition consulting.

Alongside that research, I'm a certified Kidney Health Coach through the American Kidney Fund and serve on the National Kidney Foundation's Medical Advisory Committee and as an NKF peer mentor. I'm also a community and patient support leader with NephCure.

This platform is for patients, caregivers, and clinicians who want real evidence about kidney disease, without losing the human side of what it means to navigate it. The goal is the same whether your question comes with a diagnosis or not: make the research clearer, kinder, and actually useful for whoever needs it.

"Better science should mean better days. Most people don't need more information to get there — they need someone to make it mean something."