Contact
School of Public Health
- mafernan@ualberta.ca
Overview
Area of Study / Keywords
Digital Food Environment Food Literacy Public Health Nutrition
About
Dr. Fernandez is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nutrition Sciences. Her research focuses on understanding the impacts of digital food environments on health and nutrition with a particular interest in food literacy, eating practices, and dietary intakes. She is passionate about conducting research that aims to understand how the Internet is influencing the way that we eat and how to help the public navigate evolving digital food environments.
Dr. Fernandez is actively conducting research on digital food retail (i.e., online groceries, food delivery apps, and meal kits), nutrition influencers, navigating nutrition (mis)information on social media, and studying connections between food literacy, mental health, and wellbeing.
Before joining the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa, Dr. Fernandez completed CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship at the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. Her doctoral work at Université Laval involved evaluating a national mass media campaign that promoted food skills to Canadian parents. She is a registered dietitian, the Associate Editor / French Editor of the Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research, and is an active member of the Canadian Nutrition Society.
Melissa is committed to fostering collaborative and inclusive research environments and mentoring trainees to build research capacity and interest in digital food environments.