DrCindy Needham

Dr Cindy Needham is Deakin University Post Doctoral Research Fellow with a strong program of work in public health nutrition and systems science and a proven track record in securing competitive funding, leading multi-disciplinary collaborations, and translating evidence into actionable policy. She transitioned from senior roles in local government to academia, earning her PhD at Deakin University’s Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition (GLOBE) within the Institute for Health Transformation (IHT).

Her research sits at the intersection of health geography, food environment monitoring, systems science and implementation science, with a strong focus on knowledge translation. She has pioneered national methodologies to measure and address inequities in food access, including Australia’s first longitudinal analysis of food retail environments. This work underpinned the creation of the Australian Food Retail Environment Monitoring Tool (AFRMT), now embedded in the Australian Food Environment Dashboard, viewed over 1,100 times, and actively used by local governments to inform strategy and policy.

Since completing her PhD in 2022, Dr Needham has secured more than $3.5 million in research funding, including a Category 1 MRFF Incubator Grant ($756k, CIA). In this project, she leads a team across Victoria and NSW to co-design a world-first digital platform that captures lived experiences of food environments in rural and remote Australia, applying innovative systems science methods to generate actionable policy options. The co-design framework developed through this work is already published and is guiding other researchers working in rural health contexts.

Extending her expertise to the online food environment, Dr Needham led the first statewide study of food outlet healthiness on online delivery platforms (ODPs). This produced:

·        A world-first food environment scoring index for ODPs;

·        Evidence of socioeconomic and geographic disparities in online food retail healthiness; and,

·        Findings on misclassification of “healthy” food outlets on ODPs (in press).

This research was funded through an IHT Seed Grant ($18k, CIA).

Dr Needham is recognised for her facilitation and capacity-building skills in systems science, particularly in Group Model Building, and has trained and mentored practitioners across health, government, and community sectors. She has developed and adapted methodological innovations, including consensus mapping and hybrid GMB/co-design approaches, to tackle complex public health issues. She co-led the National Sustainable Asthma Care Roadmap roundtable series, shaping national policy, and is Co-Design Lead for the $9 million MRFF-funded DELIVER project, trialling innovative methods to improve health service access for older adults in rural Victoria.