Micronutrient supplements in pregnancy presented by Dr Shelley Wilkinson AdvAPD, PhD
The Supplement Scoop: What Pregnant Women Need to Know
The use of multiple micronutrient supplementation during pregnancy has become common place in Australia. It makes sense that parents look to a supplement as a nutritional safeguard but as dietitians it’s valuable to understand the benefits alongside the potential harms in order to advise on appropriate use. Dr Shelley Wilkinson suggests we find balance within the big picture and describes what that looks like in practice.
Learn about:
- How multiple micronutrient supplements, not whole foods, are currently relied upon for meeting key nutrients in this population.
- The clinical indications for a handful of single nutrient supplements.
- Which nutrients may cause unintended harm to mother or baby when supplemented at high doses.
This presentation covers:
- The demand for supplements in pregnancy
- What does the evidence say?
- Clinical practice approach
Dr Shelley Wilkinson is an Advanced Accredited Practising Dietitian and also has a PhD in Psychology. She has been a dietitian for over 30 years. Her research aims to improve mothers’ and babies’ health, during and after pregnancy, by advancing nutrition care and capabilities of services and clinicians. Her work focuses on women at high risk of poor outcomes, especially those with gestational diabetes and at risk of excessive gestational weight gain.
Key approaches in her research portfolio have involved evaluating methods to translate nutrition best practice into clinical care. Applying learnings from her NHMRC TRIP (translating research into practice) fellowship she has collaborated with numerous Queensland Health Services to facilitate adoption of new models of care, improving patients’ and staff’s satisfaction, clinical measures, as well as increasing understanding of how to co-create these meaningful changes with clinical teams.
Her current roles is as a Project Officer at the Mater Mothers in Brisbane. Her work supports an evidence-informed, co-creation approach to the delivery of care within Obstetric Medicine - with recent projects radically redesigning GDM care; evaluating the normalising of pregnancy care for women at high medical risk (“OMGP”) and a soon-to-launch “fourth trimester clinic”, 4HER, bridging the chasm between hospitals and primary care to reduce long term chronic disease risk for women.
She is also the Director and Principal Dietitian of Lifestyle Maternity, a specialised dietetic practice focused on providing nutrition and lifestyle support for women throughout their fertility journey, pregnancy, and the first year postpartum.
To register for the presentation and associated documents including the assessment quiz click here