Number of awards
1
Start date and duration
September 2021 for 3 years full-time.
Overview
Are you interested in improving children’s diets? This exciting PhD will help develop the evidence-base on potential interventions in secondary schools to improve students food and drink choices, and, influence practice and policy.
Children do not consume enough fruit or vegetables but consume too much saturated fat and sugar. Individual, social, environmental and policy all influence what we eat. The Covid-19 pandemic has re-highlighted societal inequalities, including for children. The school environment can play a significant role in addressing some of these inequalities.
Over 3 million children attend a secondary school in England for 190 d/year. Each year, a group of students transition from primary to secondary school leading to more independence in food and drink choices due to different school food environments and the opportunity to influence food and drink choices of large numbers of children. Although there are food-based standards that apply across the whole school day in secondary schools there is little research beyond the lunch period.
Under the Prevention, Early Intervention and Behaviour Change theme of the NENC ARC, this PhD will enable the candidate to develop key research questions exploring opportunities to improve food and drink choices in secondary school students. The candidate will have the opportunity to (i) develop independent thinking, (ii) refine the research question(s) and review the literature (iii) consider data collection methods for student food and drink choices and (iv) use theory and qualitative methods to explore co-designing an intervention with stakeholders. In addition, this PhD provides opportunities to:
- work collaboratively
- undertake post graduate training
- disseminate findings
- engage with NIHR ARC North East and Cumbria and Fuse Centre for Translational Research in Public Health.
Sponsor
Newcastle University, via the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria (NENC).
NIHR ARC NENC is one of 15 regional ARCS funded by NIHR to conduct and implement high quality research to improve health and care. Our vision is to deliver ‘better, fairer health and care at all ages and in all places’, with a focus on seven themes. Our doctoral fellows are distributed across themes and universities and are a crucial part of our capacity building strategy.
Name of supervisor(s)
Drs Suzanne Spence, Liz Evans and Frances Hillier-Brown
Eligibility Criteria
You must have a 2:1 honours degree in a subject related to nutrition and have, or expect to obtain, a Masters degree (Merit or above) in a health or social care related discipline with a substantial quantitative component. If your first language is not English you need an overall IELTS score of 6.5 (at least 5.5 in all sub-skills) or equivalent language qualification.
This award is only open to home (UK) students.
How to apply
You must apply through the University’s online postgraduate application system by creating an account. To do this please select ‘How to Apply’ and choose the ‘Apply now’ button.
All relevant fields should be completed, but fields marked with a red asterisk must be completed. The following information will help us to process your application. You should:
- click on programme of study
- insert 8300F in the programme code section and click search
- select Programme name ‘PhD in the Faculty of Medical Sciences (full time) – Health Services Research’
- insert PH019 in the studentship/partnership reference field
- attach a covering letter and CV. The covering letter must state the title of the studentship. Please quote reference code PH019 and state in the covering letter how your interests and experience relate to the proposed project
- attach degree transcripts* and certificates and, if English is not your first language, a copy of your English language qualification.
*You will not be able to submit your application until you have submitted your degree transcript/s.