Diet and lifestyle are widely recognized as foundational components in clinical practice guidelines for the prevention and management of non-communicable chronic disease. However, strategies to effectively implement nutrition guidelines while addressing health equity remain underdeveloped and present major challenges. This session will examine how integrating co-design and community-based participatory research frameworks from the earliest stages of research—through to dissemination—can drive evidence-based interventions that are responsive to community needs. Presenters will highlight the importance of engaging diverse community perspectives through advisory committees, interviews and focus groups, both prior to and during intervention development and testing. The session will also emphasize the value of adaptive design, including participant feedback to refine interventions and ensure final deliverables are culturally relevant and impactful. The speakers will illustrate the application of these frameworks across life stages: 1) nutrition and health in adolescent athletes, with a focus on psychosocial factors and gender norms and 2) nutrition and disease management in adults at high risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Examples of community-informed deliverables will be shared, demonstrating how collaborative approaches can enhance the relevance and effectiveness of nutrition interventions.
Nutritional Sciences
University of Toronto
Dr. Laura Chiavaroli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto and Affiliate Scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael’s Hospital. Her research program addresses the important implementation gap between guidelines-based nutrition therapy for cardiometabolic diseases and effective strategies to mobilize them, while also addressing the equity gap. She leads large interdisciplinary teams in the co-design and testing of innovative implementation strategies leveraging the use of digital tools and randomized trials to drive effective policies and programs related to dietary patterns for cardiometabolic disease across diverse communities. She also tests new policy enhancements to support adherence and demonstrates novel applications of methods to improve assessments of social and gender determinants of health, to identify communities to target and provide evidence to drive inclusivity in guidelines and advance health equity. She is directly involved in guidelines development as co-lead of the Nutrition Chapter for Diabetes Canada, co-chair and methodologist for the update of the Diabetes Nutrition Study Group (DNSG) of the European Association of the Study of Diabetes (EASD) clinical practice guidelines and a member of the Guideline Development Panel (GDP) for the 3rd EASD guideline on Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes. She has authored over 100 publications and holds several grants, including multiple grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She was recently awarded the 2025 IAFNS Emerging Leader Award and the 2024 American Society for Nutrition Mead Johnson Award for outstanding research from a young investigator.