Dr Sharon Noonan-Gunning
I am the Co-Course Leader for MSc in Global Public Health Nutrition and a member of the Community Health, Well-being and Resilience research group. I am a full-time member of staff, teaching undergraduates and postgraduates. I lead the modules on Nutrition in Emergencies, Global Food and Health Challenges and Community Engagement.
I am a dietitian with a PhD in Food Policy and a postgraduate diploma in epidemiology. I am co-chair of the London Branch of the British Dietetic Association (BDA) and Research Officer for the BDA Public Health Specialist Group.
My experience is mostly in the UK and in London, with its great diversity of people, communities and cultures. My international experience lies in the Caribbean, with voluntary work with the Antiguan and Barbudan Diabetes Association.
Community-based, public health approaches to death and dying: exploring community-level interventions led by nurses and dietitians to support families of people in palliative and end-of-life care.
I lead research which explores a community-based, public health approach to palliative and end-of-life care, ‘Living Well Dying Well’. That involved a transdisciplinary world cafe conversation on inequalities in death and dying in 2024. The next stage is being co-designed with the community in SE London.
Universal Rights to Food and Health: exploring disconnects in the policy process, impact on health equalities, stigma, using lived experience and participatory research.
With ten Global Public Health Nutrition (GPHN) students, I co-produced the community conversations research led by Dr Regina Murphy Keith in 2024. That involved qualitative, lived experience research carried out in Liverpool, Belfast, Dublin and London to enable the voices of people living in food insecurity.
I facilitate the qualitative research of alumni GPHN students, leading peer research of food bank users on the meaning of the right to food.
Workforce and community perspectives: exploring public health nutrition and community dietetics for the 21st Century.
I received the British Dietetic Association General Education Award of £370,00 to explore PHN workforce capacity and capability during the COVID pandemic in the context of austerity. That involved a national mixed-methods survey. It illustrated that as food insecurity increased over time, PHN resources declined, being replaced by the third sector, often a volunteer workforce. That research was followed by case studies of two boroughs and an ethnography among six food banks/community food provisioning projects (publication in progress).
Doctorate research
I was awarded my PhD in 2018, which explored the lived experiences of working-class parents of higher-weight children. It asked whether food policy helped or hindered. It evolved from my experiences as a specialist dietitian in child weight management, in which nutritional inequalities were evident. It illuminated how policy processes determine food choices in areas of deprivation and highlighted the unheard voices of parents.
