Southampton team launches the Mind-Food-Space project in South Africa

Researchers in the Faculty of Medicine have launched a new project in South Africa assessing physical and mental health conditions in young people.

Body composition, brain, social and human capital foundations are established during adolescence, so it is a critical window for intervention to change mental and physical health trajectories.

In a Lancet series on adolescent nutrition, Faculty researchers highlighted that we now have the largest generation of young people in human history (1.8 billion) and that 10 to 24-year-olds form 40 per cent of the world’s population. The series explored the effect of nutrition on adolescent growth and development, the role the food environment has on food choices, and which strategies and interventions might lead to healthy adolescent nutrition and growth. It said that investing in adolescent nutrition and health has been overlooked, despite data showing significant economic benefits and multiple benefits to the individual presently, in their future as adults, and in the lives of their children.

Working with colleagues at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Professors Shane Norris and Mary Barker have established the Mind-Food-Space project.

They will utilise an innovative in-depth suite of methods including citizen science, monitoring technology, photography, mental health assessments and qualitative interviewing to assess depression, stress and anxiety, dietary intake, physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep in adolescents.

It will also assess the impact of household and community context on these outcomes.

The data will give important insight into the interaction of context and nutrition and health of adolescents, as well as support the development of new interventions to assist young people to thrive in challenging, urban poor settings in the UK and Africa.

The team also intend to make an application for funding to extend the project with the University of Jimma in Ethiopia.

Professor Mary Barker said: “We have an exciting opportunity here to work with young people in low-resource settings to understand the way they experience the combination of mental and physical health problems. On the back of this understanding, our partners and young people in South Africa and Ethiopia will develop new primary care services to address a large and unmet need for adolescent health support.”