Profiles
Dr Desley White
Lecturer in Dietetics
School of Health Professions (Faculty of Health & Human Sciences)
Role
Lecturer in Dietetics. Module Lead for the Dietetics Year 3 honours Project Studies II research module, and Year 1 Nutritional Epidemiology. Also contributing to bioscience, and quantitative methods topics throughout the programme. Other teaching includes on the Advanced Professional Practice MSc, and general nutrition lectures to other health professions students. Year 1 Dietetics coordinator.
Qualifications
PhD Health Studies, awarded a Dean's Studentship to study.
BSc (Hons) Dietetics, First class.
Prior to coming to Plymouth to study Dietetics in 2005, I had been a potter for 20 years, the latter 15 years as a self-employed potter and teacher.
Professional membership
Registered Dietitian Health Professions Council
Member UK Genetic Haemochromatosis Society
Member European Iron Club
Roles on external bodies
Secretary and Treasurer to Haemochromatosis International
Teaching interests
My specialist teaching area is research, and I enjoy exploring and sharing the creative process of research with others. I am particularly interested in the development of teaching methods for supporting students with statistical analysis, and the use of Excel and SPSS software.
Teaching interests include quantitative research methods, and basic epidemiological statistics such as frequency measures, and the concepts of odds and risk. These are relevant to the understanding of the dietetics literature, and the reporting of key nutritional research such as the Mediterranean diet studies, and the long-running American National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. Understanding the statistics behind large, and small, scale studies informs the student's understanding of the evidence behind their practice, and thus is key to becoming and remaining evidence-based practitioners of their profession. I also teach Evidence Based Practice to Year 1 students, including critical analysis skills for reading published research.
Additional roles include the delivery of profession-specific "Dietetics in a Nutshell" lectures. These are one-off sessions aimed at Year 1 students of Health Professions such as Midwifery and Dentistry, which are designed to cover areas of dietetics key to their work, and equip them with the pathways needed to access up-to-date and accurate dietetic information throughout their careers.
Research interests
PhD Health Studies, thesis title: Non-transferrin-bound iron and protein glycation in type 2 diabetes, explored the effects of high plasma glucose levels on the iron-binding protein transferrin in type 2 diabetes. Laboratory-based work identified fragmentation of transferrin resulting from oxidative damage when exposed to glucose incubation, but subsequent comparison with human samples suggested this effect may have little physiological impact. Further work with human samples found previously unreported links between non-transferrin-bound plasma iron, cholesterol, and haemoglobin, suggesting the increasing fragility of red blood cells in type 2 diabetes.
Other research
Other research activity has included working as a Research Dietitian, advising participants on a dietary sodium restriction study investigating blood pressure in overweight, marginally hypertensive adults.