Dr. Rola Al Ghali is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the L’Abbé Lab at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on food environment surveillance, nutrition policy evaluation, chronic disease prevention, and health equity. In her postdoctoral work, she is evaluating the impact of Canada’s front-of-package nutrition labelling regulations on food reformulation, consumer behaviour, and population dietary health.

Rola completed her CIHR-funded PhD in Community, Public and Population Health at Ontario Tech University, where she examined the cognitive, behavioural, and contextual determinants of dietary sodium intake. During her doctoral training, she developed the Behavioural Assessment Instrument for Dietary Sodium (BAIS), a theory-informed tool for assessing behavioural, social, and environmental determinants of sodium intake, and led the Canadian Nutrition and Health Survey (CNHS), a national nutrition surveillance initiative supporting interdisciplinary nutrition and public health research.

An internationally trained Registered Dietitian, Rola brings over 20 years of clinical, academic, and research experience across Canada and the Middle East. Her research aims to generate policy-relevant evidence that supports healthier food environments, improves dietary health, and advances health equity.