Helen is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and Exercise Scientist by training, and currently holds the Marie Bashir Clinical Research Fellowship in Adolescent Health at the Academic Department of Adolescent Medicine, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. Helen has 10 years’ experience in adolescent and young adult health research, particularly in the area of nutrition and obesity. Much of her earlier research centred around helping young women who struggle with weight to establish better lifestyle patterns, nutritional status, self-image and quality of life. Upon doing this work, she increasingly realised the importance of building healthy habits early on. This has led to her current work that focusses more on the adolescent age group. Helen’s projects look at understanding how major physical and chemical changes in the body during puberty can impact on teens’ appetite, dietary behaviours, obesity and chronic disease risk in teenagers. More broadly, Helen also has interests in exploring creative and modern ways to engage adolescents and young adults in healthy lifestyle behaviours using communication pathways and messages that are relevant to young people of this generation.