Canada
The Digital Food Convergence and Integrity Research Ecosystem Canada (DFCIRE-Canada)
Scientific Lead / Contact
Prof. Laurette Dube
Laurette.dube@mcgill.ca
Canada national node of the Food Nutrition and Health Research Infrastructure (FNH-RI)
The Digital Food Convergence and Integrity Research Ecosystem Canada (DFCIRE-Canada) is led by the McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE), with co-leads, the Universities of Toronto and Guelph. It is the Canada national node of the Food Nutrition and Health Research Infrastructure (FNH-RI), a European Union Initiative. The food convergence approach takes a person-centered in supporting adaptive real-world behavior change in traditional and modern contexts. Convergence is first at the person level in fostering balance between aspiration, expectation and achievement in one’s roles as citizen, consumer, worker or patient. Second, convergence is at the level disciplines and sectors that singly and collectively define contexts for the person’s choice and behavior, be these physical or digital. This digitally-powered person-in-systems approach is anchored in complexity sciences and societal scale transformation at the interface of food, nutrition and health research. The aim is to improve the understanding and prediction of behavioral, organizational, and system-level pathways towards robust economically and culturally viable solutions to support healthy diets, lifelong wellness and resilience. DFCIRE Canada is also a core component of the McGill led global initiative that assembles a broad spectrum of stakeholders into a network of national and international partners to accelerate food convergence and system integrity in both research and innovation The University of Guelph, the ‘Food University’ of Canada us contribute its broad expertise in agri-food, nutrition and health towards the goals of FNH-RI. The University of Toronto, with its expertise in nutritional sciences, public health and medicine brings national and international leadership in healthy food policy, food environment monitoring and large data system analytics.