Dr. Kirsten Lee (she/her) is a public health nutrition researcher focused on food policy and food systems. She is a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Global Food Systems and Policy Research group and member of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at York University. Dr. Lee is also a CIHR Health System Impact Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Public Health Agency of Canada. In her post, she is collaborating with the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada to develop a national-level surveillance framework for monitoring the impact of food environments and food systems on eating patterns among Canadians. She completed her PhD in Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo, where she evaluated food and nutrition interventions for their potential to support healthy and sustainable eating among post-secondary students.
Working with provincial- and national-level governments and organizations, Dr. Lee aims to generate evidence on the potential impact of policies to support healthy, sustainable, and equitable food systems. She integrates systems thinking to examine the impact of policy on population-level eating patterns, including the trade-offs on human and planetary health. Her current work focuses on identifying and developing national- and global-level indicators that can be used to improve surveillance of food environments, the food supply, and food systems. She has interests in integrated Knowledge Translation and Exchange to better engage a range of decision-makers and knowledge users in co-production of evidence and policy.
Dr. Lee has previously worked with Public Health Ontario and the Canadian Institute for Health Information. She is currently engaged in several networks, including the Canadian Association for Food Studies and Canadian Association for Global Health, and has contributed to collaborative groups at post-secondary institutions to support healthy and sustainable campus food systems.