Network Leads
Prof Nicola Heslehurst
Nicola leads on an NIHR School for Public Health Research (SPHR) research programme exploring prevalence, impact and intervention needs for pregnant people experiencing food insecurity. She has supervised multiple student projects relating to food insecurity in this life course period including associations with maternal weight, diet, pregnancy outcomes, and breastfeeding; women’s and children's experiences of food insecurity; and news media framing of food insecurity among mothers in the first 1,000 days.
@NHeslehurst
A/Prof Fiona McKay
Fiona is an Associate Professor of Health Equity in the School of Health and Social Development and the Institute for Health Transformation. Her research interests relate to the study of reliance and how different groups survive and thrive in situations of adversity. Her work includes those experiencing forced displacement, issues of refuge and asylum, those experiencing food insecurity, single mothers experiencing financial insecurity, and drug users who struggle to access health services, in the Australian setting and internationally. Much of her current work is related to the experiences of food insecurity amongst a diverse range of populations, where she seeks to understand the phenomenon better and explore new ways to describe it. She has a considerable body of work exploring ways to measure and respond to community hunger, strong relationships with the emergency and community food sector, and is skilled in various methods used to explore of hunger and service provision across the sector, including qualitative approaches, policy analysis, and co-design. She leads a group of qualitative researchers exploring food security, with research based in Australia, the UK, and India.
@feemck
Dr Zoë Bell
Zoë is an ESRC-funded postdoctoral fellow exploring food insecurity in the first 1001 days. Her research adopts multiple methods, with a particular focus on qualitative and co-development approaches. Zoë’s fellowship project is exploring the experiences of food insecurity both during and after pregnancy to inform future support recommendations. This work builds from her doctoral research which was amongst women and children broadly. Her work is informed by her research background within the fields of biomedical science, human nutrition, and social science research methods training.
Zoë has co-supervised a variety of student projects covering women’s health, including a variety of food insecurity specific projects. She is also currently serving as a co-opted events operations committee member for The Association for the Study of Obesity (ASO).
@ZoBell20
Prof Lesley Frank
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Lesley is the Canada Research Chair in Food, Health, and Social Justice and Director of the Fed Family Lab at Acadia University which is a space for training students and collaborative social research for food and health justice. Her research on infant food insecurity explores maternal feeding work within the context of political-economic factors that create a poverty-induced crisis of care in terms of food, feeding, and health inequities for mothers, children, and families. Lesley is the author of Out of Milk: Infant Food Insecurity in a Rich Nation (2020) and has published 8 peer-reviewed journal articles related to the impact of household food insecurity on infant feeding practice. She was the PI on the Feeding in the Early Years Project, that piloted a survey tool for monitoring infant food insecurity in high income contexts, and currently leads the project Finding Formula: Caregivers Experiences of the of the North American Infant Formula Shortage. Lesley is also a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives where she has been the single, or co-author, of the Child and Family Poverty Report Card for Nova Scotia for over twenty years.
ORCID: Lesley Frank (0000-0002-4996-1625)
@franklyless
Dr Kiya Hurley
Kiya is an early career researcher and programme coordinator for the NIHR School for Public Health Research (SPHR) Children, Young People & Families research programme. Kiya is a Public Health Nutritionist and co-leads the Food, Pregnancy & Me study, exploring food insecurity in during preconception and pregnancy. She is also leading a project exploring food related needs of young people and families in emergency and temporary accommodation and the role of housing providers in prevention of food insecurity. Kiya is currently supervising one masters student exploring food insecurity in secondary school children and one PhD student exploring the roles of schools in formal and informal food aid for families and the cultural differences in food aid provision, access, and utilisation in Birmingham.
Dr Luseadra McKerracher
Luseadra leads two research projects aimed at investigating relationships between health and wellbeing during pregnancy and peri-partum, food security, and the broader socio-political environment, one of which focuses on Denmark and its so-called “ghetto plan” and one of which takes a cross-national, comparative perspective. She also previously co-led a project in Canada on pregnancy nutrition called the Mothers to Babies Project, in which food security emerged as a dominant theme. In connection with these projects, Luseadra has (co)-supervised several master’s and undergraduate theses. More generally, Luseadra is interested in understanding socio-environmental factors that shape pregnancy and peri-partum nutrition and health and in developing innovative and community-oriented strategies for health promotion during the pregnancy and peri-partum periods.
Dr Gina Nguyen
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Gina is a postdoctoral research associate at Newcastle University. Her current research focuses on maternal obesity and reproductive health, particularly relating to health inequalities and food insecurity during pregnancy. She has a specific expertise relating to the measurement of food insecurity in pregnancy from her PhD. She is a team member of the SPHR funded project on food insecurity in pregnancy. She is also co-supervising Master of Public Health students on several systematic review projects on food insecurity in pregnancy.
@GinaGiang
Dr Paige van der Pligt
Paige is an Advanced Accredited Practicing Dietitian with over fifteen years’ experience working across the public and private healthcare sectors. She is Senior Lecturer in Nutrition and Dietetics, and co-leads Deakin University’s Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition Health in the First 2000 Days research group. Paige’s research targets the link between pregnancy nutrition, food insecurity and diet quality with maternal and neonatal health and disease. Her work explores how adequate access to effective antenatal and postnatal nutrition and healthcare systems for all women can be achieved. She has previously and is currently supervising multiple research and PhD students, is an experienced qualitative and quantitative researcher and has previously designed and implemented pilot interventions with postnatal women.
@paigevdp
Julia Zinga
Julia’s research interests relate to food insecurity during pregnancy, and how the antenatal healthcare system could respond to this public health issue through effective screening and provision of support strategies. Julia has explored the experiences of food-insecure pregnant women, and their views regarding food insecurity screening within routine antenatal healthcare. Julia also works as a clinical dietitian to provide nutrition support to pregnant women at one of Australia’s largest maternity hospitals, which services communities experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage.
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