MRC Epidemiology UnitProgramme Leader
Dietary Public Health
Has now left the Unit
Work and interests
Dr Pablo Monsivais led the Social, Economic and Neighbourhood Determinants of Diet programme within the Dietary Public Health theme at the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), where his research focused on the social and economic determinants of food choices, diet quality and health.
Pablo has now left the Unit, returning to the US to take up a position as Associate Professor at the Elson S Floyd College of Medicine, Washington State University, Spokane. Pablo continues to collaborate with CEDAR, and can be contacted at p.monsivais@wsu.edu
His previous projects have explored the economics of nutrition, with an emphasis on developing quantitative, survey-based methods to measure the affordability of a healthful diet, and he is now initiating new studies in two areas. First, in the area of health inequalities, he is investigating the mechanisms that give rise to social patterning and socioeconomic gradients in diet quality. Of particular interest are the social and economic pathways that couple low socioeconomic status with poor diet, with food costs, the money available to purchase food and neighourhood patterns of food availability being some of the factors investigated. A second area of research is in measuring the effects of nutrition and public health programmes and interventions on food consumption and the nutritional quality of the diet. This work also extends to the use of modeling and other analytical approaches to identify cost-sensitive ways of improving nutrition at the population level.