Sarah’s research includes projects exploring food insecurity, nutrition policy, food environments and their relationship to child health.

According to Sarah this award will allow further development of research which can be used to inform the government’s healthy eating guidelines for children, and to engage more deeply with young people themselves around food choices.

“I am honoured to receive this award. It will allow me to talk to rangatahi to better understand what healthy eating means to them which will help to inform the Ministry of Health’s work and ensure we create healthier food environments with public health messaging that appeals to them,” said Dr Gerritsen.

Watch a video of Sarah talking about her research: Connecting the dots in our neighbourhoods - YouTube

Sarah is developing an innovative research method  for use with children and young people. This research takes children’s perspectives on the dietary guidelines, their experiences of barriers and facilitators to following the guidelines, and what public health messaging would appeal to them, directly to policy makers at a critical time in the policy development cycle.

“Children are increasingly recognised as active agents in decisions about what they eat and drink, with ‘pester power’ to influence what foods parents purchase, as well as increasing autonomy to spend their own money on food. Additionally, household food insecurity is limiting food choices, coupled with the widespread marketing of unhealthy food and drinks in children’s daily lives means that children’s dietary decisions are often complex.”

Sarah is the Associate Director of the Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal study and works as a Senior Research Fellow on nutrition-related research in the study. Sarah also led analyses of the children’s food intake during the Covid-19 lockdown, associations between food insecurity and child wellbeing, and child eating behaviours.

“The information we receive from the Growing Up in New Zealand families is so important for our understanding of child development and wellbeing in Aotearoa. I’d like to thank families for participating – we recently completed gathering information from nearly 5,000 families and children who are were around the age of 12.”

As well as her work at Growing Up in New Zealand, Sarah is an accomplished academic. In the four years since being awarded her PhD, she has had 31 peer-reviewed publications, over a third of which she was first author. Her research has had direct impact on national government policy, influencing the development of dietary guidelines, and international policy recommendations from the United Nation’s FAO and WHO, plus helped catalyse community action around unhealthy food environments in West Auckland.

For more information on the University of Auckland's 2022 Celebrating Research Excellence Awards see here.