Sharon Kirkpatrick, PhD RD, is a nutritionist who conducts research and capacity building related to dietary assessment.

Understanding people’s eating patterns—including what they eat and drink and the contextual factors that influence diet—is essential to better elucidating how diet influences health, as well as how to support eating patterns consistent with disease prevention. The main focus of Dr. Kirkpatrick's work is on improving and disseminating strategies for appropriately collecting, analyzing, and interpreting dietary data. This work is supported by a Capacity Development Award from the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute, among other funding sources.

Dr. Kirkpatrick's work also explores the utility of systems thinking and methods to better understand the array of factors that influence major nutrition challenges and the effectiveness of interventions to address these challenges. In addition, she has long-standing interests in food access among marginalized populations, as well as food policy. Read more about Sharon's work.

Dr. Kirkpatrick is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo. Previously, she was a nutritionist with the Risk Factor Monitoring and Methods Branch at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. She received two Awards of Merit from the National Institutes of Health for her work in dietary assessment. She is the co-Editor-in-Chief of Nutrition Journal and an Associate Editor for Public Health Nutrition, and serves on a number of expert working groups and committees.