Dr Monique Tan, BSc MSc PhD

Profile

I am a Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition and an NIHR Advanced Fellow at Queen Mary’s Centre for Public Health and Policy. I am interested in policy measures that encourage food reformulation and make it easier for everybody to enjoy healthier diets.

My background is in Nutrition and dietetics (University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland), International Health (Uppsala University, Sweden), and Data Analytics for Government (University of Glasgow, UK). I also have research and field experience in Europe, Asia, and Africa, notably through my work for the World Health Organization and the European Commission.

I originally joined Professors Feng J He’s and Graham MacGregor’s team at Queen Mary as a PhD student. My doctoral research focused on salt reduction in China, which my work helped identify as one of the countries with the highest salt intake in the world.

Through an NIHR Advanced Fellowship, I am now funded by the NIHR to lead a programme of work centred on the salt reduction programme in the UK, where average salt intake still exceeds the maximum recommended levels. Excess salt intake is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, the biggest cause of premature deaths in the country.

I work closely with UK’s leading advocacy group on salt reduction, Action on Salt, to achieve policy impact.

I also lead other projects related to my research interests, notably on our out-of-home food environment (restaurants, cafes, takeaways), with other organisations including Action on Sugar, Bite Back, the Obesity Health Alliance, ShareAction, and Nesta.

I am on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/moniquetan).

Research

Research Interests:

• Food environments
• Product healthiness
• Food and nutrition policies
• Population diets
• Non-communicable disease prevention

Publications

Song J*, Tan M*, Wang C, Brown MK, Pombo-Rodrigues S, MacGregor GA, He FJ. Salt intake, blood pressure and cardiovascular disease mortality in England, 2003–2018. Journal of Hypertension. 2023 Nov 1;41(11):1713-20.       (*joint first authorship)

Tan M, He F, Morris JK, MacGregor G. Reducing daily salt intake in China by 1 g could prevent almost 9 million cardiovascular events by 2030: a modelling study. BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health. 2022 Dec;5(2):164.

Tan M, He FJ, MacGregor GA. Obesity and covid-19: the role of the food industry.BMJ 2020;369:m2237

He FJ*, Tan M*, Ma Y, MacGregor GA. Salt reduction to prevent hypertension and cardiovascular disease: JACC state-of-the-art review. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2020 Feb 18;75(6):632-47.       (*joint first authorship)

Tan M, He FJ, Wang C, MacGregor GA. Twenty‐Four‐Hour Urinary Sodium and Potassium Excretion in China: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis. Journal of the American Heart Association. 2019 Jul 16;8(14):e012923.

Supervision

Ms Isabel Valero-Morales, 'Salt intake in Mexico and a pilot salt reformulation programme'. Started October 2019.