Research in the Lawson Centre currently falls into six themes:
Healthy Development
Nutrition Interventions in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Food and Nutrition Policy
Nutrient Sensing and Personalized Health
Food Behaviour in Families
Global Nutrition
Delivery science to improve maternal, infant and child nutrition globally
Each theme spans several areas of focus, outlined below.
Healthy Child Development
Epigenetics, fetal programming, gene expression and regulation in animal models and human cohorts
The role of nutrient availability on neonatal development (e.g., longitudinal birth cohort of infants born to women with glucose intolerance during pregnancy)
Investigating growth, metabolic, and cognitive developmental outcomes in offspring
The effect of breast milk composition and supplements on term/pre-term infant growth and neurodevelopment
Neurocognitive development
The impact of food intake on regulation and development from birth
The impact of early nutritional deprivation in animal models of learning and behaviour
Impact of early microbiome development on gut health and chronic disease
Nutrition Interventions in Children’s Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Randomized controlled clinical trials of promising nutritional interventions, which are relevant and generalizable to primary care settings
Testing methods to facilitate uptake of evidence-based interventions into primary care and public health settings
Establishing clinical practice guidelines
Chronic disease surveillance
Reducing health disparities
Promoting equity for vulnerable populations
Development and evaluation of integrated community- and family-based models of care for high-needs populations
Children’s Food and Nutritional Policy
Integrity of children’s food supply chain (safety, nutrient density, claims on food, nutrition standards, food marketing)
Culturally appropriate local crops and food technology
Food security in Canada
Equity in access
Availability to nutritious food
Nutrient Sensing and Personalized Health
Genetic determinants of food metabolism (nutragenomics)
Lipid and glucose biomarkers (metabolomics)
Food Behaviour in Children and Families
Family nutritional literacy and awareness, and impacts on child food behaviour
Effect of changing physiological and external environment on food intake behaviours during puberty
Global Child Nutrition
Providing leadership on international child nutrition public policy
Studies of nutrition during pregnancy, infancy and childhood in international environments