Researchers and practitioners in nutrition and epidemiology met at Karolinska Institutet
Karolinska Institutet hosted the annual meeting with the Swedish national Network in Epidemiology and Nutrition (NEON). The theme for this year’s meeting was: ”Digital lifestyle interventions and BigData in nutritional research”. Around a hundred researchers and practitioners in nutrition and epidemiology from all over Sweden met in Flemingsberg.
The NEON annual meeting was held on October 12th, 2022, in the Neo building in Flemingsberg. The theme of the meeting this year was ”Digital lifestyle interventions and BigData in nutritional research” and brought up issues on how digital interventions can promote healthier diets and physical activity, as well as the potential of using large digital platforms to collect extensive amounts of objective data through sensors and devices to study dietary behaviours, for disease prevention and also for communication and decision making in health care.
“These annual meetings are important as they provide us with the possibility to discuss hot topics and to interact with other nutritional researchers in Sweden,” says Professor Marie Löf, at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet, who together with Professor Agneta Åkesson, at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, were hosting the event. "The current meeting clearly illustrated the great potential of digitalisation for nutritional research", Marie continues.
The annual meeting is one of the ways of collaboration, which was the reason for why the NEON network was formed back in 1997. It was formed by nutritional epidemiologists as a mean to stimulate interaction and communication between individuals and to strengthen Swedish nutritional epidemiology research by promoting collaboration, competence, and resources. Today over 400 researchers and clinicians are part of the network, all with an interest in nutritional epidemiology and methodological issues related to studies on diet and health. Professor Anna Winkvist at the University of Gothenburg is the coordinator of NEON.
The annual meetings always include key presentations by invited lecturers, but also presentations by doctoral students, followed by discussions with selected senior scientists. There is also a poster session where members have an opportunity to display recently presented posters.