International fellowship a career highlight

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Dr Kathryn Beck; Dr Kathryn Beck was recently honoured at the 6th International Course in Nutritional Epidemiology at London’s Imperial College, United Kingdom.

International fellowship a career highlight

Dr Kathryn Beck from Massey University’s School of Food and Nutrition has returned from the prestigious 6th International Course in Nutritional Epidemiology at London’s Imperial College with a rare international honour.

The human nutrition and dietetics senior lecturer was the only New Zealand academic on the course of 25 people, and one of just four awarded a World Cancer Research Fund Academy fellowship.

The course was a career highlight, and extremely beneficial to her work in the College of Health, Dr Beck says. “A lot of the course confirmed that what we are doing here in nutrition in New Zealand is on the right track.

“The biggest difference is the size of the studies in Europe. They use data sets of up to half a million participants, whereas with us, a big study is four or five thousand people. The course extended my knowledge. I have the tools to be able to take the next step in applying that knowledge.”

The course focused on analysing big data sets related to dietary intake and associations with health and disease. “There is a big study in Europe called the EPIC Study [European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition] which looks at how nutrition influences chronic disease. A lot of the case studies we were given were based on EPIC,” she says.

“I feel with my own data analysis, I get 90 per cent of the way there before questions arise. The course provided that extra 10 per cent, so it was perfect. It covered off the questions I have analysing data here in New Zealand.”

The connections she made over the two-week course were invaluable too, she says. “I met academics from Scandinavia, Japan, Europe, the United States, and Australia. We worked in groups to analyse data related to a nutrition issue and presented our findings at the end of the course.”

She is now working to put what she has learned into practice. “I would like to be able to work on bigger data sets and continue to develop my knowledge in nutritional epidemiology, and further my work on dietary patterns and how they impact on health. So, rather than focusing on just a nutrient or a food, investigating how foods and nutrients are eaten in combination. This is a more complex way of looking at how people eat, but also better reflects reality,” Dr Beck says.

“I really want to be able to expand that at the national level and I have plans to collaborate with some of the people I met on some international studies.”

Biography:

Dr Kathryn Beck is a senior lecturer in human nutrition and dietetics, and associate team leader in human nutrition at Massey University. She is a New Zealand registered dietitian with 15 years of experience in clinical, community, health promotion and academic settings.

Dr Beck is principal investigator on several studies including an investigation of dietary patterns, socio-demographic factors and anthropometric characteristics using data from the New Zealand adult nutrition survey.

She teaches in nutrition assessment, sports nutrition, communications in dietetic practice, and statistical analysis. Her research interests include the development and validation of tools to assess dietary intake, dietary patterns and associations with chronic disease, and determinants of and solutions to iron deficiency in populations.

Dr Beck completed her Master of Science in Human Nutrition at Massey University in 2008 using stable isotopes to investigate iron absorption in young women. Her PhD, completed in 2013, investigated dietary causes, consequences and solutions to iron deficiency in young women.

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