Diet quality in the first 2000 days of life & mental health across childhood and adolescence

Previous observations have indicated that longer duration of breastfeeding and healthier dietary patterns during pregnancy and/or during the first years of life significantly shape children's and adolescents' neurodevelopment and mental health.

We are interested in:

1.Contributing to a wider project that involves drawing observations from cohort studies and/or RCTs to examining the influence of breastfeeding and diet quality during pregnancy and/or early childhood on child/youth mental health across different global settings. 

2.Contributing to design/co-design of scalable multicomponent intervention in health settings and/or beyond that involves the promotion of evidence-base nutrition guidelines in the first 2000 days of life for promoting mental health and wellbeing of children and the youth.

We offer:

1. We bring expertise in nutritional epidemiology, maternal and child nutrition, early life nutrition, child/youth psychology and behaviour, indigenous youth/Māori Rangatahi mental health, Kaupapa Māori methodologies, longitudinal research, RCTs (involving nutrition exposure/outcomes). We bring also strong network in this area of research with Brazil.

2. We offer to conduct a comprehensive examination on the influence of diet quality and feeding practices during pregnancy and early childhood on mental health across childhood/youth within the context of New Zealand. These observations will be drawn from the Growing up in New Zealand birth cohort data (https://www.growingup.co.nz/). This is a contemporary and the largest New Zealand birth cohort. Growing up in New Zealand is nationally generalisable, allowing for robust analyses by socioeconomic position and ethnicity (including the Pacific peoples and Māori-the NZ indigenous population).