Public health researcher awarded more than $3.5 million

Dr. David Hammond, a researcher in the School of Public Health Sciences, received more than $3.5 million from the latest CIHR Project Grant program for his project on national-level food policies.

As Canada works to implement two major policies as part of the federal Healthy Eating Strategy, Hammond is assessing their impact at the population level to identify national trends in dietary patterns and the effectiveness of these measures to improve dietary intake.  

In Canada, the policies include nutrition labelling (FOPL) and national school food policies, while other countries such as the U.S., Australia and the U.K. are implementing policies such as restrictions on marketing unhealthy food to children and alternative approaches to food labelling.

“Poor diet quality is a leading cause of non-communicable disease, including cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes,” Hammond says. “To address the growing health and economic burden from unhealthy diet, an increasing number of countries are implementing national-level food policies to modify the food environment. There is a need to evaluate the population-level impact of these policies.”  

Since 2018, surveys have been conducted with a total of 230,754 respondents, including adults and youth in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. The study proposes to extend the International Food Policy Study (IFPS) over the next five years, with annual waves of 16,000 adults and 8,500 youth to evaluate national nutrition policies with the potential to directly inform policy in Canada and globally.

CIHR is the Government of Canada’s health research investment agency that funds research across the country to understand the complexities of health and support the development of policies and programs that improve the health of individuals and communities. 

Excerpted from More than $4 million awarded to Waterloo health researchers.