About

Shu Wen Ng, PhD, is a health economist and professor in the Department of Nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her primary scholarly objective is to enhance understanding of individual and household-level decisions regarding dietary and activity behaviors and their impacts on health. Her research considers the constraints imposed by monetary, time, and biological factors, and how these decisions are made within broader environmental or policy contexts. Dr. Ng employs tools and approaches from economics, epidemiology, sociology, and public policy, collaborating with experts across these disciplines. Her research focuses on innovations such as combining large secondary data sources to identify macro-level levers like policy and industry pledges, creating new metrics to measure shifts in eating and activity cultures, and analyzing the circumstances under which these shifts occur to identify effective and sustainable health behavior changes. She has been a co-investigator on several foundation and NIH-funded studies utilizing 'big-data' on commercial store sales, household purchases, and nutrition label data, alongside dietary intake and nutrition databases, to study the effects of policies like taxation and quotas on consumer behavior and health outcomes. Additionally, Dr. Ng has analyzed historical time-use data from various countries to estimate activity levels and identify trends among different subpopulations.

Research topics

• Environmental health
• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Business
• Psychology
• Marketing
• Geography
• Gerontology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Applied psychology
• Finance
• Economics
• Food science
• Agricultural economics
• Engineering
• Environmental science
• Internal medicine
• Communication
• Social psychology
• Database

Selected publications

• Can cash improve diet quality in old age? evidence from a large-scale unconditional transfer

  World Development · 2026-02-25

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Changes in sales of packaged food and beverages, energy, and nutrients after the implementation of front-of-pack warning labels in Mexico

  Social Science & Medicine · 2026-03-20

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Warning Labels and Taxes: Simulated Impacts When Considering Implementation

  American Journal of Preventive Medicine · 2026-01-23

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Novel Approaches for Identifying Unhealthy Food and Beverages for Policy: Insights from Purchases of Packaged Products in Latin America

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Beyond Added Sugar Reduction: A Narrative Review of Policies to Address Nonsugar Sweeteners

  Journal of Nutrition · 2026-03-18

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Front-of-Package Food Labels and Perceived Weight Stigmatization

  JAMA Network Open · 2025-06-20 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Importance: Front-of-package food labels (FOPLs) about nutrient content and health effects are a promising policy to improve diet quality but may also contribute to harmful weight stigma. Objective: To assess whether different types of FOPLs impact perceived weight stigmatization, whether weight-neutral label content mitigates stigmatization, and possible trade-offs between perceived stigmatization and effectiveness. Design, Setting, and Participants: This randomized clinical trial with a between- and within-participant design used a single-exposure online survey conducted from January 18 to 26, 2024. Participants were US adults aged 21 years or older recruited using an online crowdsourcing research platform. Interventions: Participants were randomly assigned 1:1:1:1 to 1 of 4 types of FOPLs applied to sugary beverages: control labels, nutrient warnings (ie, indicating beverages high in calories or added sugar), text-only health warnings, or graphic health warnings (ie, indicating beverages were linked to obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay). In random order, participants viewed 2 versions of their assigned label type differing on whether the content referenced calories and obesity (ie, standard version) or not (ie, weight-neutral version). Main Outcome and Measures: The primary as-treated outcome was perceived weight stigmatization. Secondary outcomes were perceived message effectiveness, attributional judgments of responsibility for weight, and explicit weight bias. Results: A total of 2522 participants completed the experiment (1262 [50%] women; mean [SD] age, 44.3 [15.2] years). Among standard labels, graphic warnings (mean differential effect [MDE], 0.81; 95% CI, 0.71-0.92) and text-only warnings (MDE, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.30-0.51) were perceived as more stigmatizing than control labels, while nutrient warnings were not (MDE, 0.003 [95% CI, -0.10 to 0.11]; P = .96). Weight-neutral labels were perceived as less stigmatizing than their respective standard versions (range: MDE, -0.66 [95% CI, -0.72 to -0.60] for graphic health warnings to -0.08 [95% CI, -0.14 to -0.02] for nutrient warnings). Weight-neutral versions were perceived as less effective than standard versions for nutrient warnings (MDE, -0.11; 95% CI, -0.16 to -0.06) and graphic health warnings (MDE, -0.05; 95% CI, -0.10 to -0.001) but not for text-only warnings. Graphic and text-only warnings did not affect explicit weight bias, while nutrient labels led to a small bias reduction (MDE, -0.08; 95% CI, -0.16 to -0.002). Conclusions and Relevance: In this randomized clinical trial of FOPLs, nutrient warnings performed best compared with other FOPL types at simultaneously maximizing perceived effectiveness and minimizing perceived stigmatization. Labels perceived as more stigmatizing were not consistently perceived as more effective. Removing references to obesity from health warnings reduced stigmatization without meaningfully reducing perceived effectiveness. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT06179043.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Did A Fruit and Vegetable Incentive Program Support low-income Households in North Carolina during the COVID-19 Pandemic? A Mixed Methods Assessment of the Healthy Helping Program and Other Pandemic-Related Food Assistance

  UNC Libraries · 2025-05-07

  articleOpen access

  In 2020, the Healthy Helping Fruit and Vegetable Program provided SNAP-eligible beneficiaries with $40/month, for up to 3 months, to purchase fruits and vegetables at a chain supermarket in North Carolina. A survey to describe participants’ experiences with the program and interviews to explore whether these experiences were shaped by participating in other pandemic-related food access programs were conducted. In conjunction with other food access programs, programs that allow participants freedom to choose what they purchase may alleviate household hardships and provide greater access to nutrient-dense foods during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

  PublisherDOI

• Working towards affordable healthy diets: a review on innovations in food price monitoring, policy and research in Australia and beyond

  Proceedings of The Nutrition Society · 2025-09-05 · 2 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Healthy diets are unaffordable for billions of people worldwide, with food prices rising in high-, middle- and low-income nations in recent times. Despite widespread attention to this issue, recent actions taken to inform policy prioritisation and government responses to high food inflation have not been comprehensively synthesised. Our review summarises (i) innovative efforts to monitor national food and healthy diet price, ii) new policy responses adopted by governments to address food inflation and (iii) future research directions to inform new evidence. Evidence synthesis. Global. None. We describe how timely food and beverage pricing data can provide transparency in the food industry and identify key areas for intervention. However, government policies that improve food affordability are often short-lived and lack sustained commitment. Achieving meaningful impact will require long-term, cross-sectoral actions that are led by governments to support food security, healthy diets and resilient sustainable food systems. This will necessitate a better understanding of how the political economy enables (or hinders) policy implementation, including through coherent problem framing, mitigating conflicts of interest in policymaking, working together as coalitions and developing and utilising evidence on the food security and related impacts of food pricing and affordability policies. Diverse actors must be better equipped with robust data platforms and actionable policy solutions that improve the affordability of healthy and sustainable diets, including by lowering food prices and addressing the broader socio-political determinants of food insecurity.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Longitudinal Assessment of Adiposity Change on the Incidence of Different Cardiometabolic Diseases Among Adult Qataris

  medRxiv · 2025-08-05

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Anthropometric and body composition changes may contribute differently to cardiometabolic disease risk depending on fat distribution and sex. Few studies have examined these longitudinal changes in Middle Eastern populations. To evaluate how five-year changes in weight, visceral adipose tissue (VAT), waist circumference (WC), and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) relate to incident elevated blood pressure (EBP), diabetes, and dyslipidemia in Qatari adults, and whether baseline adiposity modifies these associations. Data were drawn from 1,765 Qatari adults (755 females, 1,010 males) in the Qatar Biobank cohort with repeated measures over five years. Sex-stratified logistic regression models were used to assess how changes in adiposity measures predicted incident disease. Interaction terms tested effect modification by baseline adiposity. Participants had a mean baseline age of 40 years. Dyslipidemia was highly prevalent at baseline (68% in males, 63% in females), while incidence of EBP and diabetes was relatively low. VAT gain was associated with higher odds of incident EBP in both sexes (OR: 1.53, 95% CI: 1.19–1.97 for males; OR: 1.85, 95% CI: 1.11–3.11 for females), and with diabetes in males (OR: 1.61, 95% CI: 1.14–2.25). WC change in females was associated with dyslipidemia (OR: 1.06, 95% CI: 1.02–1.10), while weight gain was inversely associated with dyslipidemia among females with obesity (OR: 0.89, 95% CI: 0.81–0.98). WHR in males was associated with both EBP and dyslipidemia, suggesting it may capture VAT-related risk. Some associations varied by baseline adiposity, with stronger effects among those with lower baseline VAT or WC. The relationship between adiposity changes and cardiometabolic risk varies by disease, sex, and baseline adiposity. WHR and WC may serve as useful proxies for VAT in risk assessment, especially in resource-limited settings.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The role of water insecurity in influencing water and sugar-sweetened beverage choices: A scoping review

  UNC Libraries · 2025-06-04

  articleOpen access

  Water is a critical nutrient for human health, however more than 4 billion people globally lack access to safe drinking water and climate change is expected to worsen water insecurity. Simultaneously, consumption of packaged water and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is increasing globally. Despite many plausible linkages, little is known about the relationship between water insecurity and sugar-sweetened or packaged beverage selection. The current study aimed to characterize the relationship between water insecurity and beverage selection by conducting a scoping review to identify trends in available research on beverage selection among individuals experiencing water insecurity, and creating a conceptual model explaining this relationship. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guided the systematic search of 4 databases, which resulted in the inclusion of 82 studies from 7 geographical regions, representing both middle- and high- income countries. Key emergent themes included perceptions of non-packaged water characteristics, adaptive behaviors, and how each alter consumer selection of packaged water and SSBs. Frequently mentioned non-packaged water characteristics included perceived safety (n = 49; 60%), taste (n = 31; 38%), convenience/accessibility (n = 29; 35%), cost (n = 18; 22%), appearance/turbidity (n = 12; 15%), smell (n = 10; 12%), temperature (n = 9; 11%), and hardness (n = 5; 6%). Reported adaptive strategies included water treatment/filtering (n = 25; 30%) and water testing (n = 5; 6%). Associations between water insecurity and non-packaged water, packaged water, and SSB selection varied by country income classification and demographic characteristics. These can inform potential areas for future interventional trials aiming to increase trust in and selection of plain water as well as reduce reliance on packaged or sugar-sweetened beverages.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Barry M. Popkin

  122 shared

• Lindsey Smith Taillie

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  44 shared

• Marissa G. Hall

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  19 shared

• Elizabeth Dunford

  19 shared

• Arun Azad

  Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

  18 shared

• Jenny Casanova

  Australian Red Cross Lifeblood

  18 shared

• O'Shaughnessy

  Deakin University

  18 shared

• Patsy Yates

  Queensland University of Technology

  18 shared

Education

• PhD, Health Policy and Management

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Awards & honors

• Delta Omega Honorary Public Health Society (2015)
• Frank Porter Graham Honor Society for “significant contribut…
• UNC Junior Faculty Development Award (2014)