Stefanie Vandevijvere is a Senior Research Fellow in Global Health and Food Policy. Stefanie’s work mainly focuses on different ways to accelerate progress to reducing childhood obesity. Problems such as obesity are complex, but too often this is used as an excuse to do nothing or too little. Both globally and nationally, progress has been very patchy to date. Stefanie is part of the leadership team of the International Network for Food and Obesity Research, Monitoring and Action Support (INFORMAS). This global network is measuring and benchmarking government policies, food industry practices and the healthiness of food environments globally, in order to increase accountability and ultimately actions of governments and the food industry to reduce obesity and chronic diseases. Stefanie believes that one of the ways to really make progress is to engage the public to create healthier community food places. To date, the pressure for action on big societal problems, such as obesity or inequalities, has been predominantly elite (i.e. professional driven) not grass-roots (i.e. public driven). Public support for action is often a quiet support and tools and processes are needed to convert that into a ‘felt demand and reward’ for action to create healthier food places. Stefanie hopes that Foodback might help to create this public support and pressure for healthier food policies and places across New Zealand. In addition, she believes that creating healthy food places will also increase happiness and wellbeing of communities and many generations to come.
Email: s.vandevijvere@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: 09 923 8489
The Centre for e-Research at the University of Auckland has developed the Foodback app and will make further technological improvements along the way.
Email: j.disprose@auckland.ac.nz
Funders
The development of the Foodback app and approach was supported by:
