Career Summary
Dr Lyza Norton is an Early Career Researcher and Accredited Practising Dietitian (APD) with more than two decades of clinical experience within Queensland Health, specialising in eating disorders across child, adolescent and young adult populations. As Assistant Director of Nutrition at Gold Coast Health, she led service innovation across acute and community settings before completing a Queensland Health clinician research fellowship (2019) and a full‑time PhD at Griffith University (conferred 2023). She has since held a Research Fellow position at the University of Melbourne and is currently a Research Fellow at Western Sydney University, contributing to a nationally funded MRFF program of work.

Contribution to Field of Research – Impact and Translation
Dr Norton’s research makes a substantial contribution to early prevention of disordered eating through the integration of clinical practice, public health implementation and co‑designed early intervention strategies. Her clinician research fellowship implemented a universal prevention program across community child health nursing services, reaching ~30,000 service occasions per year and embedding evidence‑based food‑parenting guidance into routine care. This initiative attracted media attention across local, state and international outlets and directly informed her doctoral research focus.

Her PhD advanced this work by developing a socially informed, co‑designed and knowledge‑translation‑driven parent education package supporting healthy food‑parenting practices in early childhood. These resources have been adopted across all 12 Gold Coast community child health centres, demonstrating sustainable and scalable implementation. Dr Norton’s translation expertise extends nationally through her role as lead content expert for Body Blocks, an Embrace Collective program downloaded by >3,000 early childhood centres, and her consultancy work with Eating Disorders Families Australia on the Nourish, Nurture, Notice prevention program. Her profile has led to invited presentations at ICED (2022, 2023), NEDS (2024, Denmark) and a keynote address at the Victorian Oral Health Promotion Conference (2024).

Collaborations and Partnerships
Dr Norton maintains strong national and international collaborations, including partnerships with the University of Bath (UK) to adapt and evaluate early prevention resources and with the University of Minnesota on longitudinal trajectories of eating behaviours and body image concerns. She is an active collaborator on two major MRFF‑funded national projects—ScreenED and First Do No Harm—and works closely with NGO partners including The Embrace Collective and Eating Disorder Families Australia to ensure all research is co‑produced and grounded in lived experience.

Professional Involvement and Leadership
Her expertise is recognised through advisory contributions to national NGOs and invitations from internationally prominent groups, such as the STRIPED team at Boston Children’s Hospital (2023). She is an active member of Dietitians Australia, the Australian and New Zealand Academy for Eating Disorders (ANZAED), and the Eating Disorders and Nutrition Research Group (ENRG). She served on the Organising Committee for the 2023 ANZAED National Conference (Gold Coast), contributing to sector leadership and capacity building.

Additional Research Achievements
Since 2023, Dr Norton has been named Chief Investigator on two MRFF grants (ScreenED: $969,965; First Do No Harm: $991,669). She has 16 peer‑reviewed publications (nine first‑author) and received the 2022 ICED Early Career Researcher Best Paper Award. Her rapid post‑PhD trajectory, strong interdisciplinary collaborations and demonstrated capacity for impactful translation position her as an emerging national leader in eating disorder prevention research.