Lucinda Bell

Dr Lucinda Bell is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Flinders University's Caring Futures Institute (Better Lives Theme) within the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. A nationally recognized public health nutrition researcher, she specializes in enhancing children's health and nutrition from early life through rigorous dietary assessment, nutrition epidemiology, and evidence synthesis.

Her research focuses on:

• Prevention of childhood obesity through community and childcare interventions
• Development of dietary assessment tools for young children
• Evidence-based approaches to child nutrition and weight management
• Oral health-nutrition connections in early development

Her work directly informs national guidelines and policy through initiatives like the NHMRC EPOCH-Translate Centre.

Dr Bell leads significant projects including the COMS-EPOCH initiative developing standardized obesity prevention outcome measures and the dietary component of the NHMRC-funded SMILE birth cohort study. Her publication record shows consistent high-impact output across public health nutrition, with 61 research outputs including 45 articles and 8 review papers.

Award highlights include:

• Flinders University Vice-Chancellor’s Early Career Researcher Award (2016)
• CoNHS Vice President’s Award for Research (2017)
• Dietitians Association of Australia Award of Merit (2018)
• Numerous student research prizes during doctoral studies

As an active supervisor, she has guided 1 PhD student to completion, currently supervises another PhD candidate, and has mentored 9 Honours students. Her professional engagement includes editorial board membership for Nutrition and Dietetics, leadership in the National Nutrition Network for Early Childhood Education, and contributions to the Royal Commission on Early Childhood Education.