Kathryn Backholer, Professor

Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition
Deakin University

Regulating Big Food in the Era of Big Data

This presentation will explain why and how digital marketing is much more influential that traditional marketing, they key challenges across the world related to regualting unhealthy food marketing on digital devices, how artificial intelligence can help address these challnges and what the optimal regualtory parameters are for protecting children from unhealthy food marketing online. 

Speaker/Chair Bio:

Kathryn Backholer is Professor and Co-Director of the Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition at Deakin University, a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for the Prevention of Obesity. She leads a programme of research focused on the social, commercial, and cultural determinants of population health and is particularly interested in interdisciplinary solutions to complex public health problems. She regularly consults to UN agencies and international governments on the legislative options and regulatory parameters for protecting children from harmful marketing, including in the digital ecosystem.

More recently, she has been working on a project to create automated tools, using eye-tracking technology and artificial intelligence, to monitor how products and brands are marketed to children and how children engaged with various forms of advertising and marketing strategies to support future policies through healthier advertising environments.