Sundus Mahdi
Research Associate
Profile
Biography
Sundus is a Research Associate in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York. She works on the school food work stream of FixOurFood. Sundus is passionate about food policies that aim to improve children’s diet and overall health whilst also reducing health inequalities.
She also has a keen interest in whole systems approaches to see successful changes in behaviours and health outcomes. Her additional research interests include development and evaluation of public health interventions, school food settings, economic evaluations of childhood dietary interventions, behaviour change theory and the behavioural sciences.
Sundus is keen to develop her skills in partnership working and welcomes opportunities for collaboration within and outside of academia.
Sundus has completed an MSc in Health Psychology at University College London and a Wellcome Trust funded PhD in Public Health Economics and Decision Sciences at the University of Sheffield. Her research was focused on exploring feasible approaches to evaluating dietary digital interventions with a focus on the Change4Life Food Scanner app and it’s impacts on clinical, economic and health outcomes. This research included mapping of behaviour change techniques onto the Change4Life Food Scanner app, stakeholder engagement for the conceptual modelling of a dietary digital intervention, a pilot and feasibility study investigating the effects of the Change4Life Food Scanner app on dietary intake, and a cost-consequence analysis of the Food Scanner app.
Throughout her PhD, Sundus established various public and third sector experience and collaborations. This included publishing a report on the salt content within crumpets in collaboration with Action on Salt and conducting consultations with local authorities in collaboration with OHID Y&H on issues relating to food in a school setting. Sundus has also led public engagement initiatives in delivering healthy eating workshops to primary school children, and has an interest in public engagement activities.
Sundus has also gained extensive teaching experience and has been awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. She is also an organising committee member of the UK Public Health Science Conference.
Before her PhD, Sundus worked at Sheffield Children’s Hospital as a Research Project Manager where she managed an NIHR funded research project for the delivery of a study investigating the health status in children and young people with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH-UK; Chief Investigator: Dr Nils Krone). She also took on various other roles, such as interning within the work, worklessness and health team at Public Health England. She also worked as a research assistant at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust where she developed a survey on improving access to NHS mental health services amongst BAME groups in the Bradford District and an evaluation of a complex Stop Delirium! intervention for the prevention of delirium in care homes.
Qualifications
- BSc Psychology, University College London
- MSc Health Psychology, University College London
- PhD Public Health Economics and Decision Sciences (Wellcome Trust funded), School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield
- Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy
Research
Overview
Sundus is passionate about food policies that aim to improve children’s diet and overall health whilst also reducing health inequalities. She also has a keen interest in whole systems approaches to see successful changes in behaviours and health outcomes.
Her additional research interests include development and evaluation of public health interventions, school food settings, economic evaluations of childhood dietary interventions, behaviour change theory and the behavioural sciences.
Sundus is keen to develop her skills in partnership working and welcomes opportunities for collaboration within and outside of academia.
Projects
- Free School Meal Auto-Enrolment project
- Free School Meal Allowance project
- Fix our Food in Schools: A Yorkshire based experimental school cohort supporting the co-design, implementation and evaluation of strategies aiming to transform food systems
Research group(s)
Supervision
If you are interested in studying for a PhD in any of the following areas, and have PhD funding confirmed, please get in touch:
- Development and evaluation of public health nutrition interventions
- Food policies
- School food settingsChildhood dietary interventions
- Dietary mobile interventions
- Behaviour change theory and the behavioural sciences in relation to public health nutrition.
Contact details
External activities
Memberships
Organising committee member of the UK Public Health Science Conference
Invited talks and conferences
Invited talk: Supporting Free School Meal Auto-Enrolment in Yorkshire and Beyond. Faculty of Public Health, Food Special Interest Group. Online meeting. September 2023
Media coverage
NutritionInsight (2023). Mixed bag: Research finds dietary app has “modest” health outcome terms but hails nutritional education.