Dr Lucinda (Lucy) Bell

Dr Lucinda Bell is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Caring Futures Institute (Better Lives Theme), at Flinders University. She is a nationally recognised public health nutrition researcher, focused on enhancing children’s health and nutrition from the start of life.

Lucy has a strong track record in paediatric dietary assessment, nutrition epidemiology, evidence synthesis, and the delivery and evaluation of child nutrition and weight management initiatives across a range of settings: childcare centres, families, and communities. Dr Bell’s body of research has helped transform approaches to the prevention and management of childhood obesity and has improved our ability to routinely monitor and measure diet-related behaviours.

Lucy is part of the VegKIT project team aiming to develop tools and interventions to increase children's vegetable consumption (https://www.vegkit.com.au/). This program is being delivered in partnership between Flinders University, Nutrition Australia (Victoria Division), and CSIRO, and funded by Hort Innovation. Lucy is currently leading the evaluation of a curriculum and educator mealtime environment training intervention in Long Day Care Centres.

Lucy is also part of the NHMRC EPOCH-Translate Centre for Research Excellence leading the development of a Core Outcome Measures Set for Early Prevention of Obesity in Childhood (COMS-EPOCH) (https://earlychildhoodobesity.com/).

In her role on the SMILE (Study of Mothers' and Infants' Life Events affecting oral health) study, an NHMRC-funded birth cohort study investigating the relative importance and timing of critical factors that shape young children's oral heath, Lucy leads the dietary measures component, developing a brief free sugars screener for young children.

Lucy has supervised Honours and PhD students to completion and is the recipient of a Flinders University Vice-Chancellors Early Career Researcher Award.