Hannah Brinsden from the World Obesity Federation joins the FRC for our Food Bites series and explores the current issues in the food system and what civil society organisations and academics could be doing to work towards solutions that address the issues within the food system.

Hannah is a Registered Public Health Nutritionist with experience working in campaign and research roles within civil society organisations at a UK, European and international level. Hannah is currently Head of Advocacy & Public Affairs at the World Obesity Federation and has previously worked at Consensus Action on Salt & Health and the Food Commission. In these roles Hannah has campaigned on a number of issues including food marketing, reformulation, labelling, obesity-prevention, consumer rights and conflicts of interest in research and policy. Most recently, Hannah has been involved in advocacy calling for a comprehensive global food treaty to protect and promote healthy diets.

Hannah is also a part time PhD student at City University, London. Her research involves a critical analysis of public health advocacy in UK food and nutrition policy, through which she hopes to improve understanding of ‘what works’ in advocacy and the indicators that can be used for assessing its impact and effectiveness. Hannah’s main interests lie in the commercial determinants of health, obesogenic food environments, tackling the upstream drivers of disease, power and public interest advocacy.