Professor Bridget Kelly – MEALS4NCDs Project

Bridget is an Associate Professor in Public Health Nutrition and an Australian Research Council Fellow based at the Early Start Research Institute, University of Wollongong. Her career objective is to influence the development of public policy that fosters supportive food environments in Australia and globally, specifically in relation to food marketing to children. She is the module leader for food promotion with INFORMAS (International Network for Food and Obesity / non-communicable Diseases Research, Monitoring and Action Support), a global network that aims to monitor and benchmark food environments, under the auspices of the World Obesity Federation. Since 2011 she has led and collaborated on five Category 1 grants worth over $1.3million. She is currently leading an ARC Linkage Project on the impact of food marketing exposure on children’s attitudinal and behavioural outcomes, and is a Chief Investigator on a NHMRC Project Grant on the power of elite sport sponsorship to promote healthy eating by young adults. Her PhD explored the nature and scope of food sponsorship of children’s sports clubs, and the impact that this has on children’s food attitudes and intake.