Millie Barrett

Overview

Millie is Project Manager and Researcher at the Centre for Food Policy, City University of London. She has a background in public health research focusing on dietary and health inequalities, the food environment, and interventions to support adolescent behaviour change. During the Covid-19 pandemic Millie worked with a team of qualitative researchers to run the Teens in Covid-19 (TeC-19) study focusing on adolescent wellbeing and resilience during Covid lockdowns.

Millie is currently working on the NIHR PRP-funded national evaluation of the Government's Healthy Start Scheme in England. This is an in-depth evaluation using qualitative and quantitative research methods to evaluate the scheme with the following impact objectives:
i) to illustrate the lived experience of Healthy Start users and non-users, particularly scheme benefits, effects of changes to registration, digitalisation and value, and strategies that could increase usage;
ii) to assess how eligibility and use affects food purchasing and dietary patterns in the short and longer term;
iii) to examine sociodemographic, psychosocial and contextual drivers of Healthy Start use, and the impact of HS eligibility on early childhood development;
iv) to understand how health professionals, community organisations and food retailers promote HS and support families to eat healthily;
v) to co-create and prioritise options for reforming local systems and the national HS scheme to optimise usage and health outcomes.

Qualifications

• MSc Public Health (Nutrition), University of Southampton, United Kingdom, Jan 2017
• BSc Nutritional Therapy, University of Middlesex, United Kingdom, May 2009
• Postgraduate Diploma in Refugee Studies, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, Aug 1998
• MA Hons Spanish, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, May 1995

Employment

• Visiting academic, University of Southampton, Dec 2022 – present

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