Dr. Colette Kelly
Director, Health Promotion Research Centre
Dr. Colette Kelly is Director, Health Promotion Research Centre, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Health Promotion Research, Senior Lecturer, Health Promotion, School of Health Sciences and Vice Dean Graduate Studies, College of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences.
My background in Physiology led me to a career in Nutrition Science, closely followed by a move to Health Promotion to ensure my work makes a difference in practice and policy. Currently I lead a team investigating child and adolescent health with the ultimate goal to improve children’s lives and reduce the gap in health inequalities observed in Ireland and internationally. To this end my team and I work closely with the World Health Organization to improve child and adolescent health across Europe.
My nutrition research focuses on the impact of food environments on child and adolescent dietary habits. Examples include quantifying the range of fast food outlets close to schools and how this negatively affects adolescent diets and enabling parents to make healthy food choices for their families.
I have held leadership roles on an international study of child and adolescent health, which involves 50 countries, including leading a team of nutrition researchers focused on adolescent diets. Currently I chair a group of European and North American researchers focused on youth participation in adolescent research. Recent work includes engaging with adolescents across Europe to input to the next World Health Organization European Child and Adolescent Health Strategy, 2020-2030.
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