SAHMRI and the University of Adelaide researcher awarded Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship

Associate Professor Caroline Miller, SAHMRI’s Health Policy Centre Director and the University of Adelaide’s Beacon Senior Research Fellow (School of Public Health), has been awarded a Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship for her work into reducing the over-consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in Australia.

The Heart Foundation’s Future Leader Fellowships support cardiovascular researchers as they build their research capacity and become leaders of research groups.

Associate Professor Miller’s Fellowship, administered by the University of Adelaide, will have the same focus as her NHMRC Career Development Fellowship, in trying to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks among children, adolescents and adults. This would improve the healthiness of their diets and help protect them from weight gain, diabetes and risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Associate Professor Miller said that poor diet and unhealthy weight are overtaking smoking as Australia’s leading burdens of all preventable disease, so there is an urgent need to find effective interventions to address this.

“I am very pleased to have received this Fellowship from the Heart Foundation to test the potential effectiveness of consumer information/warning labels on sugar-sweetened drink containers with parents, adolescents and adults in Australia. Importantly, this will provide evidence of direct relevance to the Australian policy context,” Associate Professor Miller said.