Nutritional Epidemiology

Date: Tuesday 1 - Thursday 3 July 2025

Duration: this online course runs remotely over three full days with live sessions on Microsoft Teams.

Course directors: Jennifer Carter, Carolina Carvalho and Carmen Piernas-Sanchez

A poor diet is one of the leading risk factors for ill health. This short course in nutrition epidemiology aims to provide an understanding of how to assess the complex relationship between nutrition and the risk of major diseases. The course will place special emphasis on how to accurately measure dietary intake and analyse nutritional data in epidemiological studies. 

This course is designed for researchers who have had an introduction to the field of epidemiology or other health-related research fields. It assumes that participants are familiar with commonly used study designs (e.g. cross-sectional, cohort, randomised trials) and understand how to interpret fundamental statistical concepts such as p-values, confidence intervals, and the outputs of linear and logistic regression models.

To refresh knowledge of these key topics, pre-course material will be released a few weeks before the course. These materials will include videos and quizzes covering: fundamental concepts in nutrition, classic research designs and interpreting statistical results.

The course aims to train researchers to analyse nutritional data, so it would be ideal for those who intend to conduct nutritional research as part of their work or studies. 

The course will cover the importance of diet for population health; methods for measuring dietary intake (both traditional and novel); and handling dietary data in analyses of the relationship between diet and health. We will also discuss the concepts and consequences of under-nutrition and over-nutrition from a global perspective, as well as public health approaches to improving the diets of individuals and populations.

All topics will be reinforced with practical sessions, either in critical discussions or statistical analyses (in both Stata and R), demonstrating how to practically apply your learning to different contexts and datasets. One of the key aims of the course is for participants to leave with statistical code for measuring and analysing nutritional data that they can use in their own health-related research.

By the end of this course, attendees will be able to:

• define fundamental concepts and principles of nutritional epidemiology
• evaluate different methods for dietary intake measurement in epidemiological studies
• analyse nutritional data from a variety of measurement methods in order to assess the relationship of diet with health
• interpret and critique results from nutritional epidemiology studies, appreciating the roles that bias and residual confounding can play even in statistically significant results.

Course fees

£250 attendees residing in low- and middle-income countries (proof of residence required).

£400 students. 

£800 staff.

Registration will open in February 2025. To pre-register your interest for the course, please provide your email address using this link: https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/oxford/nutritional-epi-short-course

There is limited capacity on the course so by pre-registering your interest you will be notified when registration opens and given priority booking.