Clinical Nutrition Research
Clinical Nutrition is a research theme from the Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food
The Clinical Nutrition Theme aims to generate high quality evidence of effective interventions to improve nutritional status, clinical and patient related outcomes across a range of clinical conditions and age groups including clinical nutrition and dietetics research within maternal and women’s health, paediatrics, diabetes, chronic disease, oncology, gastrointestinal disorders, malnutrition, and aging. Our research originates from research questions that arise in clinical practice. This leads to research that is timely, relevant and of benefit to patients, clinicians and health services. We have expertise with patient-level interventions and systems-based interventions for food services in hospital and aged care settings. We actively translate new evidence that arises from these studies into practice and our teaching.
Preconception Health
A/Prod Nicole Kellow holds an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship where she is exploring the role of dietary advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) in female infertility.
Maternal and Women’s Health
Dr. Christie Bennett is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and Credentialed Eating Disorder Clinician. Since completing her PhD she has worked towards marrying her clinical and research interests. She is continuing to conduct research into the experiences of people with eating disorders. Christie has been investigating the role nutrition and dietetics pedagogy have on disordered eating in students. She works to privilege lived experience, acknowledging the wisdom and strength of those who live with chronic conditions such as eating disorders.
Paediatric Nutrition
A/Prof Zoe Davidson recently completed a fellowship from Duchenne Parent Project Netherlands which aimed to investigate weight management in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Her current research includes exploring nutrition in children with spinal muscular atrophy, investigating energy requirements in children living with a chronic disease and investigating the effectiveness of a family base, online program for children who are above a healthy weight
Evelyn Volders is a clinical specialist paediatric dietitian. She has a particular interest in breastfeeding and has qualified as a lactation consultant. Other areas of interest include optimal nutrition for infants and children and nutrition management of cystic fibrosis.
Older Age
Chronic Disease
Dr Tammie Choi is a bicultural dietitian-researcher with her research focus on tailoring diabetes education for Chinese Australians with Type 2 Diabetes. She has been advocating for an alternative diabetes education paradigm for Chinese patients that aligns with their cultural values and orientation of learning. In 2018, Tammie received competitive funding from Australian Diabetes Research Foundation and piloted the Australian-first Chinese culturally-tailored diabetes education program. The program model has since been informing cultural-tailoring health education and training culturally competent health professionals.
Dr Kay Nguo has expertise and a broad range of skills in clinical trials and has led a number of nutrition research projects from conception to completion. Dr Nguo’s interests include energy metabolism, body composition, metabolic health, appetite and dietary strategies for chronic disease prevention and management. She also has experience in stable isotopes for the measurement of energy expenditure (doubly labelled water) and body composition (deuterium dilution).
Dr Kaitlin Day is a research academic who is using bioinformatic techniques to understand individual variations in treatment response and how we can use these differences to personalise nutrition interventions. She is particularly interested in Obesity and how differences in gene expression may underlie treatment response, with specifc expertise in transcriptomic analysis and prediction modelling.
Amanda Anderson is a dietitian with a clinical background in intensive care nutrition.
Malnutrition
Prof Judy Bauer is a Professor of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food at Monash University. She is recognized internationally for discovery and translational research in nutrition screening, assessment, innovative nutrition intervention programs and development of evidence-based practice guidelines particularly in oncology and malnutrition. Judy is a Board member of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia and has over 40 years’ experience as a clinician, researcher and academic. She is passionate about evidence informing nutrition practice and is widely published in international literature with a Scopus H-Index of 41, over 180 peer reviewed articles and 7500 citations. She has supervised over 15 PhD scholars who are now leading clinical/academic researchers.
Dr Lisa Barker is a Registered Dietitian with international experience in clinical dietetics. Lisa has specialized in the area of malnutrition, nutrition support and gastrointestinal surgery. Her current research interests involve nutrition assessment, and nutritional management of patients in the Intensive Care Unit.
Sustainable food service
Dr Jorja Collins holds a conjoint role with Eastern Health is leading local and national collaborations aiming to improve the environmental sustainability of hospital foodservices. This includes sustainability across the food supply chain, ways to reduce food waste and increasing procurement of local food. Jorja was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2019 to travel to the US to learn about innovative green strategies in hospital foodservice.
PhD Candidates
Nathan Cook is investigating strategies to measure and manage food waste in hospital foodservices. Specifically aggregate auditing methods to measure food preparation, tray line and plate waste, as well as interventions to divert food waste from landfill such as anaerobic digestion, composting and surplus food donation.
Diana Zhu is a dietitian with research interests in paediatric nutrition and the management of chronic conditions. Her PhD focuses on improving childhood obesity treatment programs, including family-based behavioural change program delivery.
Janet Golder is a senior clinical dietitian and PhD candidate, with interests in nutritional status of hospitalised patients. Her PhD is focused on exploring the prevalence of vitamin C deficiency in adult hospitalised patients, the characteristics of these patients, and the impact of vitamin C deficiency on patient and health service outcomes.
Katie O’Brien is a senior paediatric dietitian and PhD candidate. Katie works clinically at the Royal Children’s Hospital in the neuromuscular team and her research focuses on nutritional outcomes in children with spinal muscular atrophy. Katie will explore nutrition outcomes in relation to the initiation of disease modifying therapies.
Xi (Katherine) Lin is a multilingual clinical dietitian with an interest in the management of chronic diseases and the delivery of dietary and lifestyle interventions for disease prevention. Her PhD investigates the feasibility and cultural acceptability of the Mediterranean diet for improving the cardiometabolic health of Chinese Australians.
Lauren Hanna has a background as a clinical dietitian with experience in a wide range of areas including oncology, critical care, and haemodialysis. She has been certified in the technique of body composition assessment using CT imaging analysis, a gold standard method for assessment of skeletal muscle stores in cancer research. Lauren’s PhD is examining the interplay between nutrition status, CT-derived skeletal muscle stores, quality of life, and survival in patients with upper gastrointestinal cancers.
Lina Breik is a Senior Dietitian at Eastern Health, the Founding Lead Dietitian at Tube Dietitian, and a Monash PhD Candidate. She has been working clinically for a little over a decade across various healthcare organisations in Victoria. Her doctoral journey will be dedicated to understanding the experiences and challenges of Australian adults living with a feeding tube.