Lindsey Smith Taillie, PhD - Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

Assistant Professor
Department of Nutrition
Gillings School of Global Public Health

CPC Office: 123 W Franklin St, Room 2107
CPC Phone Number: (919) 445-8313

Dr. Lindsey Smith Taillie is a nutrition epidemiologist whose work focuses on evaluating food policy efforts in the US and globally, and how these influence disparities in diet and obesity. Her work uses a combination of randomized controlled trials and natural experimental studies using large datasets on food purchases and intake to evaluate and inform food policy to prevent obesity.

Internationally, current projects focus on evaluating sugary beverage taxes, front-of-package warning labels, and marketing restrictions in a number of Latin American countries, including Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Peru. These projects involve the collection and analysis of data on food purchases and intake as well as data on the food supply, such as product reformulation and food marketing on television and on packages. The goal of these projects is to understand the real-world impact of policies on the food environment, food behavior, and ultimately, health outcomes.

In the US, her research focuses on changes in marketing and labeling of unhealthy foods and beverages, their association with the nutritional profile of food purchases and disparities in food purchases, and whether marketing and labeling policies can help consumers make healthier choices, especially in vulnerable populations such as Latino and low-income parents. Currently, Dr. Taillie is leading an RWJF-funded project to examine the impact of nutrition claims on racial-ethnic disparities in fruit drink purchases among parents. Along with colleagues in Health Behavior, she is also leading additional studies to develop and test the impact of pictorial warning labels and taxes on sugary beverage purchases and intake among Latino parents in North Carolina. As part of these projects, Dr. Taillie is developing the UNC Mini Mart, located at HPDP, which is designed to look like a real food store where people can buy and take home food and drinks for their families. The goal of the Mini Mart is to be able to design and test which types of food retail policies and interventions will encourage parents to make healthier choices.

Dr. Taillie is also leading a new Wellcome Trust-funded project to examine the impact of policies to reduce red and processed meat intake as a strategy to prevent climate change and reduce non-communicable disease.

Finally, Dr. Taillie has also conducted a number of studies on the nutrition transition in China, including fieldwork on diet behaviors and diet assessment technology. She also conducts nutrition epidemiology studies on food behaviors, diet intake, and obesity using large population-level datasets such as the National Health and Nutrition Survey and American Time Use Study.

Dr. Taillie received her PhD in nutrition with a minor in epidemiology from UNC-Chapel Hill, her MPH with a concentration in social-behavioral sciences from Yale School of Public Health, and her BA in Sociology from Northwestern University.