Anna Millichamp

BBus (Finance) UTS, BAppHealthSc (Nutrition & Dietetics) (Honours) QUT, Accredited Practising Dietitian (APD), Accredited Nutritionist (AN)

Food Literacy and ICTs: Opportunities for Supporting Young People Navigate their Food Environments

Many Australians, and young people in particular, struggle to meet nutritional recommendations. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that people experiencing disadvantage often have poorer nutritional outcomes than those who are more advantaged.

Food literacy is a complex emerging public health nutrition concept that has potential for supporting positive food and nutrition behaviours. Food literacy can be conceptualized as one’s understanding of food and how to gain additional information about food, process and analyse the information, and then act on it (Vidgen and Gallegos 2011). Food literacy is comprised of multiple, interrelated components.

Food choices are influenced by a myriad of factors that operate at multiple levels. The increasing ubiquity of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and young people’s prolific use of such technologies (social networking services (SNS) and applications in particular), point to opportunities for food literacy interventions that target the multiple components of food literacy to be actioned through an ICT framework in an engaging, social and playful way. As such, this research seeks to explore opportunities for ICTs to support the food literacy of young people in Brisbane by helping them navigate their food environments.

Biography

Anna Millichamp completed her undergraduate degree in Nutrition and Dietetics (Honours), achieving first class honours, in 2009. During her final honours year, Anna undertook independent research exploring how the price, availability, quality and variety of fruit and vegetables varied between farmers markets, supermarkets and independent fruit and vegetable retailers, and by area-level socioeconomic position, in South East Queensland. A significant outcome of this research was a paper recently published in Public Health Nutrition.

After graduating, Anna worked as a paediatric dietitian and then in private practice. During 2011 Anna worked as a research assistant on a diverse range of projects for Assoc. Prof. Susan Ash (QUT) and Assoc. Prof. Danielle Gallegos (QUT). Based on these positive research experiences, Anna decided that research was the right path for her.

Anna has a keen interest in helping all people to achieve a healthier dietary intake to help them achieve the greatest level of wellbeing that they desire. Anna’s research interests have a strong social equity focus, aiming to produce research that is accessible and relevant to a wide range of people, regardless of their social or economic position. Looking forward, Anna sees that ICTs offer significant potential for engaging and supporting positive food behaviours amongst the population and hopes to capitalise on young people’s proficiency with such technologies to develop a better understanding of how ICTs can support food literacy.

Follow Anna on twitter: @Anna_Millichamp. Her website is at http://www.createnutrition.com.au/

Supervisors

• Assoc. Prof. Danielle Gallegos (Principal)
• Assoc. Prof.  Marcus Foth (Associate)
• Dr Jaz Hee-jeong Choi (Associate)