Partnership with Cancer Council helps create healthy and supportive food environments

A decade long partnership between Dr Bridget Kelly and Cancer Council NSW is focused on healthy food environments and childhood obesity prevention – a prime mission to prevent cancer.

Dr Kelly has worked closely with the Cancer Prevention Division of Cancer Council NSW (CCNSW) as an employee, as a Chief Investigator on nationally competitive research grants, and as a consultant on CCNSW research projects.

Her PhD research was part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project grant on which CCNSW was the industry partner. This project explored the nature, extent and impact of unhealthy food and drinks sponsorship of children’s sport, and ultimately developed a model for health promoting sports clubs.

The relationship continued into another ARC Linkage Project, on which Dr Kelly is Chief Investigator, exploring the impact of unhealthy food marketing on children’s brand perceptions, food preferences and dietary intake.

As well, Dr Kelly is a co-investigator on an ARC Linkage Project grant on which CCNSW is a partner, related to food labelling; and a National Health and Medical Research Council Project Grant exploring the potential for elite sport sponsorship to promote healthy eating by young adults, including healthy eating promotion and the promotion of health messages.

More recently, Dr Kelly has been commissioned to undertake formative research for the development of a model program for health promoting sports clubs in NSW. CCNSW has piloted this program model and is rolling it out in select regions of NSW.

“These collaborative studies have contributed significantly to the public health nutrition evidence related to food marketing and food labelling as priority policy areas for creating healthy and supportive food environments in Australia and globally,” Dr Kelly said.