Influencing diets through education and beyond

Professor Fiona McCullough

I am the Professor of Dietetics, at the University of Nottingham, I have primarily been involved in curriculum leadership throughout my career but have also really enjoyed supporting colleagues with various research projects. I decided on a career in the health service when I was a teenager, having fleetingly contemplated primary school teaching.

However, since I enjoyed helping others, preferred science subjects at school and food and creating new recipes was a hobby I was passionate about, I opted for dietetics.

My career as a Registered Dietitian began in 1995 when, after completing a BSc in Human Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Ulster, I started a basic grade dietetics job at Ipswich General Hospital. I returned to Ulster to complete a PhD, during which I worked part time as a dietitian and was also given the opportunity to work with students as a practical demonstrator and to deliver a few workshops and lectures. Teaching students, in many ways, aligned in my mind with small group education with patients or staff members that I had enjoyed delivering as a dietitian. I will always be immensely grateful for the positive comments from the students and staff at Ulster, encouraging me to consider a career involving supporting students. I started as a dietetics lecturer at Nottingham in 2002, having gained experience in Manchester teaching Nutrition and Human Physiology for a couple of years. I have worked within curriculum leadership in pre-registration dietetics award, as well as developing a post registration education pathway and was delighted to be awarded National Teaching Fellow status in 2017 by Advance HE. I have been Chair of the Education and Lifelong committee of EFAD (European Federation of the Associations of Dietitians).

Since 2016 and particularly enjoy networking at national and international level, supporting other education providers. Additionally, employability is an area of particular interest to me since part of my university role is to be the academic lead for the tri-campus Employability award.

One of the highlights of my personal journey has been my involvement with the British Dietetic Association.

It has been a tremendous privilege to serve on Council as Honorary Secretary and then Chairperson. Over that time the professional body expanded in staff and more students engaged. My term of office finished in 2017, which coincided with the Academy of Nutrition Sciences (ANS) getting established and I was delighted to became involved in the conversations.

The benefits from collaboration between professional bodies in the area of evidence-based nutrition and impact on health, is what drew me into my role as a Trustee of the Academy.

Ensuring that evidence-based practice gets translated from high quality nutritional science and research and is then appropriately recognised and implemented requires nutritional expertise in an ever-increasing range of roles. including policy at local and governmental level. Since the Academy commenced, the importance of food (in terms of security, cost, availability, composition etc) has gained an increasing profile in our media! Hence -

it has been great to see the work of the ANS valuably complementing the activity of our individual organisation members

—at this time, with some many complex challenges.