"Network and systems approaches for health interventions, and applications promoting healthy eating"
TALK ABSTRACT:
Poor diets are a major cause of common ‘lifestyle’ diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Although eating is often conceptualized as an individual behavior, the evidence shows that it is shaped by social and environmental forces that are insufficiently addressed in many interventions. This talk describes how complex social networks of family, friends, peers, and community stakeholders influence what people eat, and how interventions and policy can promote healthy nutrition. I emphasize the important role of innovative network and data science methods, big data, and transdisciplinary team science to advance this work.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Dr. de la Haye is an Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. She works to promote health and health equity by applying social network analysis and systems science. Her research, funded by the NIH, the NSF, and the DoD, targets family and community social networks and social-ecological systems to promote healthy eating, healthy lifestyles, and food security, and to prevent chronic disease. She also studies the role of social networks and systems in group problem solving in families, teams, and coalitions. She serves on the Executive Committee of the International Network of Social Network Analysis (INSNA), and in 2018, she received the INSNA Freeman Award for significant contributions to the study of social structure. Dr. de la Haye holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Adelaide, Australia
