Caring Futures Institute work on early prevention of obesity in childhood will be bolstered with a new Centre of Research Excellence receiving $2.5 million funding over five years, to be shared between Flinders University, the University of Sydney and Deakin University.

This will ensure the continuation of current work at Flinders to develop Dietary Assessment Tools that measure lifestyle behaviours in children under 5 years of age. This is important because these behaviours are risk factors for unhealthy growth.

Poor diet is a key lifestyle and obesity-related behaviour, even among infants and young children. Quick and robust measurement of lifestyle behaviours, including diet quality, in young children is important for monitoring population trends and evaluating nutrition-promotion and obesity prevention programs.

The new CRE will also leverage a current NHMRC ideas grant, for which Flinders is co-lead.