The Daily Health Coach
Kia ora
Welcome and thank you for your interest in this intervention study. We are aiming to trial a novel, engaging, health & well-being intervention using social media.
Late last year, we ran a number of workshops with young women from across Aotearoa, as well as focus groups with dietitians and digital marketing specialists, in order to determine what health means to young women, and what a social media health promotion program should look like. Next, we had a handful of wonderful student dietitians and nutrition graduates help us develop the content that will be shared during the intervention.
We think what they came up with is pretty awesome.
About the Project
Empowering young women through research
We are so glad you found us!
This study is part of a PhD project within the Department of Nutrition & Dietetics at the University of Auckland. We have recently developed a health promotion programme for young women to be delivered on Instagram.
We hope that our intervention, the Daily Health Coach, will be successful in helping young women improve their health and well-being. We will do this by sharing evidence-based information and advice about mindful eating and activity behaviours to improve food and health literacy, and relationships with food. We have focused on aspects of health that are important to young women, such as confidence, self-care, and empowerment in the nutrition space and are excited to share our engaging evidence-based content that has been created and delivered by registered and student dietitians.
The important part of this intervention is that it has been co-designed, and co-created. Nineteen young women attended workshops to provide their open and honest opinions on health, social media, and their perspectives on social media as a space for influencing lifestyle changes. Following this, a content planner was created, whereby 10 Master of Dietetics students, one nutrition graduate, and the student researcher created content for this study.
We aimed to design this programme not just for young women, but with young women. And that is exactly what we did. The co-design participants, nutrition graduate and student dietitians who contributed to the project are what have made this intervention so great.
If you participate in this research, you will help us to answer the all-important question; are social media apps meaningful platforms for sharing health information and improving the health and well-being of young women?
Meet the Team
Dr Rajshri Roy
Principal Investigator
The principal investigator, Dr Rajshri Roy, is an NZ Registered Dietitian (NZRD) and specialises in research, public health nutrition, and clinical dietetics.
She is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, course directing the Masters of Health Sciences in Nutrition & Dietetics programme and conducting research in the area of nutrition and dietetics.
Jessica Malloy
Student Researcher
Jess is a PhD candidate and NZRD who is passionate about positively influencing health and nutrition.
Her interests lie in what she refers to as 'the intersection of tech and nutrition', where social media, big data, and algorithms are playing a role in modern health. Her big question is, how can we use this to our advantage as health professionals?
