MRC Epidemiology UnitResearch Associate
Population Health Interventions
Current work and interests
Mike is currently working with Dr Jean Adams on evaluating the mandatory calorie labelling law that will be implemented in April 2022.
Background and experience
Mike completed a bachelors in Biology and Neuroscience from Williams College. Interested in moving from molecular biology to population health, he completed a two-year fellowship at the University of Oxford, which included an MSc in Global Health Science and an MSc in Medical Anthropology. His diverse academic background informs his view of population obesity as a product of a complex set of social and biological factors.
During his PhD in Nutrition with an Epidemiology minor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he studied national level food policies to improve diets, particularly ways to reduce the consumption of added sugars. He was funded by a Global Cardiometabolic Disease Training program, which allowed him to work on international policy evaluation collaborations. His PhD work began in Chile, studying sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) intake among children and adolescents in Santiago, which has informed evaluations of policies meant to reduce and prevent childhood obesity. Under the direction of Professor Barry Popkin and Dr Lindsey Smith Taillie, he completed a multimethod dissertation to understand the effects of a national SSB tax in South Africa on dietary intake, individual level factors most strongly associated with behaviour change, and on the broader news media environment.