Dr Rachel Gibson

Biographical details

I am a UK Registered Dietitian.   I graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Nutrition and Dietetics from King’s College London in 2013.  I completed my PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology at Imperial College London in 2017 (The association between diet and working hours with markers of cardio-metabolic health in the British police force).  As part of my PhD I established the nutritional assessment arm of the Airwave Health Monitoring study – an ongoing longitudinal cohort study of the Great British police force conducted by Imperial College London.  Following completion of my PhD I worked as a Teaching Fellow for the MRes Clinical Research (Human Nutrition) programme at Imperial College London until I joined King’s College London as a Lecturer in early 2018.  I have clinical dietetic experience in lipid management, weight management and workplace nutrition. I am a member of the British Dietetic Association Public Health Specialist Group Committee and BDA Work Ready Steering Group. Prior to training as a Dietitian I gained a BA(Hons) in Retail Marketing from Manchester Metropolitan University and worked in business management roles across various industries including the food service sector.

Research interests

My research interests focus in two main areas: 1) workplace, diet and health and 2) dietary patterns and health

1. Workplace, diet, and health:

The World Health Organisation describes ‘multifactorial work-related diseases’ as diseases that occur in the general population but may be exacerbated or partially caused by occupational exposures.  There is increasing evidence to suggest that cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes are associated with job strain and working hours (e.g., duration and time).  Despite the role of diet in the aetiology of cardiometabolic disease being well established, gaps remain in understanding the relationships between occupational exposures, diet and cardiometabolic health. My workplace diet and health research is primarily focused in the following areas: 1) the influence of occupational factors (working hours and environment) on diet and health, 2) understanding the evidence to support nutrition, health and wellbeing in the workplace and 3) the development of workplace strategies to improve employee nutrition, health and wellbeing.

1. Dietary patterns and health

Nutritional science has evolved in recent decades from focusing of single nutrients and foods and their associations with health to understanding how the combination of the foods people eat impact health. Dietary patterns (e.g., Mediterranean diet, DASH diet) are used to measure the whole diets of populations. My research looks at how we measure dietary patterns and how they can be translated into practice.  Current projects in this area are investigating how the Mediterranean Diet may improve psoriasis outcomes and how plant based dietary patterns may benefit mental wellbeing.