Junk food advertising and obesity

In the latest episode of the ScHARR Communicable Research Podcast, Andy Tattersall is joined by Dr Penny Breeze and Fran Bernhardt to explore the topic of junk food advertisements.

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Dr Penny Breeze joined ScHARR as a PhD student and has been working as a health economics modeller ever since. Penny's research interests are in methods for longitudinal data analysis for the use in decision-analytic modelling. Specifically in complex public health decision problems for obesity and diabetes prevention. Penny co-authored a health economic modelling study which looked at the health, cost and equity impacts of restrictions on the advertisement of what can be best described as junk foods across the transport for London network.

We are also joined by Fran Bernhardt, who is a Children's Food Campaign Coordinator at specialising in restricting the marketing of unhealthy food to children. Fran advises the Mayor of London's team to write and implement their ground-breaking Healthier Food Advertising Policy across the Transport for London (TfL) network. In addition, she now supports over 100 local authorities across the UK to change their advertising policies, and has successfully implemented six new healthier food advertising policies at local government level since the TfL restrictions.

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