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 dietary assessment, evidence synthesis, nutrition epidemiology, 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 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/). This work will develop a standardised approach to measuring outcomes in early obesity-prevention interventions, to improve and harmonise evaluation.

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.