Wilma Waterlander

Wilma Waterlander is a Heart Foundation Research Fellow within the National Institute for Health Innovation at the University of Auckland (UoA) and a Research Fellow for INFORMAS, also at UoA. Wilma obtained her PhD in Health Sciences from the VU University Amsterdam and moved to New Zealand in 2012. Her PhD was on the feasibility and effectiveness of food pricing strategies to stimulate healthy eating. To date, she published 27 peer-reviewed papers and 3 books / book chapters.

Wilma’s current research is on Food Systems, where she follows products from farm to fork using value chain analysis and group model building. In addition, Wilma is joint Principal Investigator on a project examining the effects of various food taxes and subsidies on health outcomes. This project uses the 3-dimensional Virtual Supermarket tool that Wilma and her team developed to enable experimental research in a supermarket setting. Wilma is also working on a project with the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group at the University of Oxford that models the optimal food price changes for both public health and environmental sustainability outcomes.

Wilma is passionate about research that makes a real difference to society and policy and has been a long-time active member of a Dutch political party. She is involved in various international networks, including the International Council for Science and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Meeting Urban Food Needs initiative and is very excited to start her work as a Lancet Commission on Obesity Fellow.