Bentley is a medical/nutritional anthropologist whose research focus is on women's and infants' nutrition, infant and young child feeding, HIV and breastfeeding, and community-based interventions for improving growth and development of young children. Among other projects, she was the principal investigator of a 60 village, 600 mother-infant pair randomized clinical trial to improve growth and development of infants and young children in Andhra Pradesh, India.