This PhD position is part of the Regio Deal Foodvalley. This is a transdisciplinary collaboration between Wageningen University & Research, Utrecht University, national and local governments, and entrepreneurs, aiming to boost transitions towards a healthy and sustainable food system. One track of this programme focuses on nutrition and health across the life span, starting from early age to elderly. The track consists of six workpackages, including the workpackage "healthy food choices in healthy environments". In this workpackage, Wageningen University, Utrecht University, Ziekenhuis Gelderse Vallei, Gemeente Utrecht, Gemeente Ede, BeBright and other partners participate. The aim is to create a leading region where food environments are (co)created that invite healthy and sustainable food choices. The region will function as a living lab for pilots and experimentation to advance generic knowledge of food environments for healthy and sustainable diets of adults. We will use insights and knowledge from different disciplinary fields, including social psychology and public health sciences, for the design and implementation of strategies aimed at promoting healthy and sustainable food behaviors in all layers of society. This provides a unique opportunity for a learning-by-doing approach to food environments.
Within this programme, we are looking for a PhD student that has a knack for generating practice-based evidence and implementation research where combining theory and robust study design closely align with field work entailing setting up studies, collecting data, collaborating with different parties, and managing a project network. Also you will collaborate closely with other PhD students and stakeholders.
PhD Promoting Healthy and Sustainable workplace food environmentsThere is a growing interest in offering healthy and sustainable food options at the workplace. Healthy food consumption is important to encourage vitality, health and sustainable employability. As a considerable amount of time is spent at work, this is an important setting of food consumption. However, workplace food environments are not always supportive to enable healthy and sustainable food choices. Moreover, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs, up to 250 employees) not always have the opportunity to work with large caterers that can support in creating a healthy and sustainable food environment at the workplace (e.g., in the worksite restaurant). Therefore, other intervention strategies are needed to support SMBs in creating healthy and sustainable food environments.
This PhD project aims to use a co-creation approach involving relevant stakeholders and SMB employers and employees to develop and evaluate SMB workplace food environment interventions to enable healthy and sustainable food choices at the workplace. Both quantitative and qualitative studies will be conducted to gain insight in employers and employees support, requirements and needs with respect to a healthy and sustainable food environment at work. Moreover, interventions towards a healthy and sustainable food environment at SMBs will be developed and tested in a real-life experiment. In this project the PhD student will investigate implementation processes, psychological processes (e.g., acceptance, preferences) and behavioral processes such as food choices with respect to healthy and sustainable food environments in SMBs.
This position will be placed in the chair group
Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles, we are a young and ambitious chair group keen to unravel the origins of healthy and sustainable consumption and lifestyle practices.