Helen Wong, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dalhousie University

Helen Wong is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine at Dalhousie University. She is a Registered Dietitian and earned her PhD in Health at Dalhousie University as a CIHR Vanier Scholar. Her doctoral work examined the roles of online grocery shopping and digital touchpoint usage on food-related purchasing and eating behaviours. Helen’s PhD research identified ‘how’ participants interacted with their digital food environments and captured the ‘why’ behind their behaviours by focusing on lived experiences and applying the Theory of Planned Behaviour. These findings underscored the need for environmental restructuring to enable healthy eating behaviours but also the importance of considering individuals as free agents capable of making their own choices. Continuing her commitment to person-centred research, Helen’s current postdoctoral work explores the lived experiences of household foodwork (i.e., planning, purchasing, cooking, and cleaning up food) amongst older adults, along with how household foodwork influences diet quality and clinical markers of cardiovascular disease risk. Her overarching research goal is to leverage nutritional behaviours as disease prevention and health promotion tools, with a particular focus on understanding the implementation and impact of technologies for promoting healthy diets.