As leader of the state’s first dedicated prevention agency, Dr Littlewood is a passionate advocate for health promotion in Queensland.
Dr Littlewood believes every Queenslander has the right to better health, with expertise in driving outcomes for individual patients and populations in the area of non-communicable diseases. She is relentless in driving policy and action to achieve fairness for all and reach the right communities at the right time.
An experienced leader, researcher, clinician, academic and educator, Dr Littlewood has more than 25 years’ experience working with the most vulnerable patients and families across paediatric obesity prevention, nutrition and dietetics.
Dr Littlewood holds a raft of formal qualifications in dietetics, business, research and executive leadership from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), James Cook University and The University of Queensland (UQ). These include a PhD, Master of Business Administration, Master of Medical Science and Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. As such, bringing universities, industry, government and communities together to solve problems is key to her work.
She currently holds three Adjunct Professor appointments with Griffith University, QUT and UQ, and is proud to be working with these outstanding teaching and research universities. Dr Littlewood remains passionate about education, fostering student learning opportunities at HWQld.
Before her Chief Executive appointment in 2019, Dr Littlewood was a member of the inaugural HWQld Board and held titles including Director, Health Services Research, Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service and Conjoint Associate Professor, Nutrition at UQ. While Director of specialist private nutrition practice ChildD, she led the first national paediatric dietetics training course in Australia, alongside Dietitians Australia.
Dr Littlewood has been awarded for her work and proudly accepted the QUT Outstanding Alumni Award (Health) in 2020. She has also held several Board roles including Board Director, Dietitians Australia, and has been awarded Fellow, Dietitians Australia for her service.
Dr Littlewood holds a range of national and Queensland clinical and academic positions and has been an invited speaker at state, national and international conferences. Her extensive list of publications includes co-authoring ‘Digital health and precision prevention: shifting from disease-centred care to consumer-centred health’ in peer-reviewed journal, Australian Health Review.
She is most passionate about children’s health, especially those who need it the most. Through her role at HWQld, Dr Littlewood’s focus remains firmly on driving an agenda of equity to ensure the next generation of Queenslanders live healthy and active lives.