Nutrition North
The NHSA has established a Nutrition North network, a rapidly developing coalition of nutrition scientists and practitioners across the North of England. The network involves researching various aspects of nutrition – from basic metabolic science to policy and implementation.
Nutrition North is facilitated by the NHSA and exists to support the health and economic development of the North by:
- Improving nutrition in our region through advocacy and engagement with regional public health leads
- Improving the treatment and prognosis and delivery of clinical nutrition guidance to patients and those living with long term conditions in our region
- Providing coordinated access to local expertise for our region’s food and nutraceutical sectors
- Supporting the North to realise its potential for academic nutrition science
- Providing expertise on-demand to the wider body of NHSA-supported activities
Our Nutrition North Executives are:
Professor Bernard Corfe
Professor Bernard Corfe conceived the concept for the Nutrition North network, in collaboration with the NHSA, and is the first Chair of the group. He is Professor of Human Nutrition and Health at Newcastle University, where he also directs the Human Nutrition and Exercise Research Centre and the Centre for Healthier Lives.
Bernard has longstanding research interests in the role of dietary fibre in gut health, including the mechanisms of cancer prevention by fibre fermentation product butyrate, diet in cancer survivorship and protein requirements in ageing.
He has been an officer of the Nutrition Society for many years, leading several national and international conferences and is the current Editor in Chief of the Journal of Nutritional Science. Bernard is also a co-founder and scientific advisory board member of the APPG for Nutrition: Science and Health.
Professor Amelia Lake
Professor Amelia Lake is a dietitian and public health nutritionist at Teesside University. She is Associate Director of Fuse, The Centre for Translational Research in Public Health (http://fuse.ac.uk/) and is the Fuse lead on the NIHR School of Public Health research theme ‘Healthy Places, Healthy Planet’. Amelia is also a founding member of Nutrition North.
Amelia’s research involves transdisciplinary collaborations to examine how the environment interacts with individual behaviours. Her current work is around healthy planning policy, food insecurity, energy drinks, workplace health, food systems, school food environments, the obesogenic environment and knowledge exchange.
Amelia has extensive experience of working with policy makers, practitioners, non-specialist audiences and academics. She has produced training programmes as well as short films. Amelia also runs a small charity called The David Ashwell Foundation which funds research into a rare lung disease affecting newborn babies, in memory of her son David.
Professor John McLaughlin
John McLaughlin is Professor of Gastroenterology and Nutrition at the University of Manchester.
He trained in Gastroenterology and General Medicine in the Northwest Region, with a period as an MRC Travelling Fellow at Harvard University.
Current research interests are gastrointestinal physiology in health and disease, particularly the interactions between nutrients and the gut epithelium, gut inflammation, gut-to-brain signalling, and nutritional aspects of disease.
Working as a Consultant Gastroenterologist at Salford Royal Hospital, John is clinical lead for the regional GI physiology service and specialty lead for the Comprehensive Research Network for Gastroenterology in Greater Manchester.
He is a member of the UKRI-BBSRC Biosciences for an Integrated Understanding of Health Strategic Advisory Panel.
John was awarded the British Society of Gastroenterology’s Francis Avery Jones Research Award in 2007, and the European Rising Star in Gastroenterology Award in 2008.
Dr Iain Brownlee
Dr Iain Brownlee is an Associate Professor of Nutrition and Head of Subject for Food Science and Nutrition at Northumbria University. His research work has focused on dietary fibre, whole grains, seaweeds, and their potential impacts on cardiovascular, metabolic, and gut health.
Iain has designed and managed randomised, controlled trials as well as cross-sectional studies in infants, children and young adults and novel methods for scoring diet and meal quality.
His current research is on Holiday Activity and Food programmes, dietary intake and gastric reflux, bioactive fibres, and interventions to support healthy ageing and sleep quality.
More about Iain’s work can be found here.
You can access minutes of previous Nutrition North meetings below:
If you would like to find out more contact us info@theNHSA.co.uk or through our contact form