Professor Megan Warin

My current projects include:

• Food/Body encounters: new approaches and alternative solutions to obesity prevention and policy (ARC Future Fellow) (Warin, M)
  There is growing recognition of the need for new ways of tackling the obesity problem, and for forms of intervention that move beyond the limitations of individual behavioural changes. This research project provides a paradigm for re-orientating how we come to know obesity by investigating the cultural and institutional processes that shape everyday food and activity practices. Understanding and intervening in these dynamics of social practice are central to the challenges of reversing trends in the prevalence of obesity. Cultural understandings of food, eating and obesity, and the key role of health inequalities that contribute to obesity, were presented to the Senate Select Committee into obesity in 2018, and included in the Senate's final report and recommendations on interventions and policy directions for obesity in Australia.
   
• Epigenetic Charisma: The Politics of Epigenetic Hope and Hype in Australia (ARC Discovery) (Kowal, E.; Warin, M & Meloni, M)
  This project seeks to examine the ways in which epigenetic discourses are strategically taken up and used in Indigenous Australian contexts. Unlike genetic research, epigenetics offers the promise of hope through environmental change, but also carries a potential of biosocial damage.

• Risk, Trust and Socio-economic Status: Understanding middle-aged women’s responses to alcohol/breast cancer risks (ARC Discovery) (Ward, P; Warin, M; Wilson C; Olver I; Miller, E; Bissell P; Meyer, S & Macdonald, S)
  This project aims to identify and understand the nature of alcohol consumption patterns by ‘middle-aged’ Australian women in different socio-economic status (SES) groups, and if/how these are shaped in response to considerations of trust and future health risks. We will focus on the known risk of alcohol for the development of breast cancer, which is particularly important given that Australian culture is seemingly saturated by alcohol use, marketing and social acceptability.
   
• Family by Family: Addressing childhood obesity through local understandings and local solutions (Channel 7 Children's Research Fund) (Warin M; Zivkovic T & Maher J)
  Research demonstrates that individual approaches telling people to eat less and exercise more do not work.  This project seeks to understand how an innovative and community led initiative that focuses on aspects of people’s lives that impact on health (such as housing, under-employment, mental health) enables people to engage in social change around food and family eating. 
   
• Improving nutrition and health outcomes for women and babies in the Aboriginal Family Birthing Program (Aboriginal Families and Baby Bundles) NHMRC
  Many Aboriginal women in SA give birth before they are 25 years old, and the recent strong policy on improving the quality of pregnancy care has focused on reducing low birthweight. This project broadens support during pregnancy and in antenatal care by offering a novel package of culturally appropriate nutrition and well-being strategies, embedded in the SA Aboriginal Family Birthing Program at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital (WCH), a model highly accepted by Aboriginal women. Key partnerships include Aboriginal Maternal and Infant Care Workers, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Women’s and Children’s Health Network, the Child and Family Health Service (CaFHS) and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.