Staff Profile: Claire Johnson

Claire started working with The George Institute for Global Health eight years ago in Hyderabad, India, where she lived for two years and worked with the Research and Development team managing a Global Alliance for Chronic Disease project on developing baseline estimates for salt intake in India. Her PhD consolidated 24hour urinary sodium data, sources of dietary salt, sodium levels in packaged food products and assessed barriers and opportunities for the development and implementation of national salt reduction strategy for India.  

Claire is now working with the WHO CC for Population Salt Reduction team as a post-doctoral research fellow and holds a National Heart Foundation postdoctoral fellowship. Her primary research interests are in nutrition epidemiology with a focus on the prevention of diet related non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries.  

Claire’s projects include monitoring the effect of food policy on diet related non-communicable diseases in the Pacific region, assessing the effectiveness of a behaviour change program to reduce salt intake in India, and she works closely with an international collaboration to regularly review the Science of Salt summarising the effect of high salt diets on health outcomes. In addition, Claire supervises a Masters student at the Fiji National University and mentors Food Policy staff in the Hyderabad, India office