Asha Kaur

Asha is a senior researcher in the Sustainable Healthy Food Group, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. Asha’s research focuses on the population-level policies to promote healthy and sustainable diets. Her research interests include food prices, price promotions, food taxes and subsidies, food labelling, nutrient profiling, food based dietary guidelines, and population-level diet and health modelling.

Asha is a work package lead on the COPPER and the SHIFTS-UPF project. COPPER involved working with the public and policymakers to co-design fiscal scenarios using a range of methods such as online surveys, a discrete choice experiment, a scoping review, deliberative forums, and focus groups. The economic, health and environmental impacts of these prioritised scenarios were then estimated. The SHIFTS-UPF project began in early 2026 and will involve working with the public, policymakers and industry stakeholders to design UPF-related fiscal scenarios. Asha is also a work package lead on the ENTHUSE project, an independent evaluation of the implementation, enforcement, and impact of the Food (Promotion and Placement) Regulations.

Asha is involved in the SALIENT and SHIFT projects which involve conducting trails of real world interventions to increase the uptake of healthy, sustainable foods. She has also been involved in multiple literature reviews including systematic reviews and meta analyses on health-related claims and price promotions.

Asha led the diet optimisation modelling underpinning the Eatwell Guide (the UK government’s dietary advice). She also worked on estimating the diet, cost, and heath implications of achieving the Eatwell Guide. She was awarded a Nuffield Department of Population Health (NDPH) Intermediate Fellowship to extend this work and estimate the environmental impact of the Eatwell Guide. Prior to this she was awarded an NDPH Early Career Fellowship to investigate the price promotions. 

Asha has delivered lectures for the NDPH MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology and the Medical Sciences Clinical Training Programme on population health, obesity, and health promotion. She also teaches on the Human Sciences undergraduate course delivering lectures on research methods, quantitative analyses, population-level health interventions, and food insecurity.

Asha has worked at the University of Oxford in various capacities since 2006. She received a DPhil in Population Health in 2018 for a thesis investigating the prevalence and nutritional quality of foods carrying health and nutrition claims and modelling the diet and health impact of different potential regulatory scenarios.  In 2006, Asha first worked as a Research Assistant with the Health Services Research Unit working on a systematic review (and consensus panel) of forensic mental health outcomes. Prior to this, Asha graduated in 2005 with a BSc in Clinical Psychology from the University of Kent.