CRE personnel
Chief Investigators
Susan Sawyer holds the Geoff and Helen Handbury Chair of Adolescent Health at the University of Melbourne and is Director of the Centre for Adolescent Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital. A paediatrician by training, she is internationally recognised for her leadership in adolescent health. Read more.
Susan is the chair of the CRE.
Twitter: @susansawyer01
Stuart Kinner leads the Justice Health group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and is a Professor of Health Equity at Curtin University. Stuart’s research focusses on the health of marginalised and justice-involved people. Read more.
Stuart leads the adolescent health and justice workstream.
Twitter: @KinnerStuart
Peter Azzopardi is co-head of Adolescent Health at Burnet and leads a program of research around global adolescent health, with a strong focus on health equity. Read more.
Pete is co-lead of the Indigenous adolescent health and wellbeing workstream.
Twitter: @peteazza
Louisa Degenhardt is a Scientia Professor, Senior Principal Research Fellow and Deputy Director at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), Faculty of Medicine, UNSW. Louisa conducts diverse epidemiological studies including analysis of large-scale community and clinical population surveys, data linkage studies focusing upon people with a history of drug dependence or chronic pain, and cohort studies of young people. Read more.
Louisa leads the substance use workstream.
Nicola Reavley is a Principal Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on the population monitoring and interventions to improve population mental health and mental health literacy and reduce stigma and discrimination. Read more.
Nicki co-leads the mental health workstream.
Twitter: @ProfNickiR
Rebecca Ivers is Head, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney, honorary Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health, and NHMRC Senior Research Fellow. Rebecca leads a global research program focusing on the prevention and management of injury. Read more.
Rebecca leads the injury workstream.
Twitter: @rebeccaivers
Holly Erskine is a conjoint NHMRC Early Career Fellow with the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland. Holly leads a research group focused on child and adolescent psychiatric epidemiology, with a particular focus on improving the epidemiological data on mental disorders among young people. Read more.
Holly co-leads the mental health workstream.
Alex Brown is an Aboriginal medical doctor and is the Scientific Director, Aboriginal Health Grand Challenge at Telethon Kids Institute. His research focuses on overcoming disparities in health outcomes for Aboriginal people, with a particular emphasis on chronic disease as the primary contributor to life expectancy differentials. Read more.
Alex co-leads the Indigenous adolescent health and wellbeing workstream.
Twitter: @adhbrown
Dr Nick Scott is the Head of Modelling and Biostatistics at the Burnet Institute. Using data collected through field studies and surveillance systems his models generate quantitative evidence on the expected population-level impact of interventions, which provides practical advice to policy makers on the appropriate level and timing of responses to diseases. Read more.
Nick leads the economic modelling within the CRE.
The late George Patton was a Professorial Fellow in Adolescent Health Research at the University of Melbourne and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. His research focused on child and adolescent health, growth and development. Read more. George was the previous Chair of the CRE.
Associate Investigators
Tim Olds is Professor of Behavioural Epidemiology at the University of South Australia. His recent research has been into how people use their time and how that impacts their health. Read more.
Dr Kim Sweeny is a Principal Research Fellow in the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities (ISILC) at Victoria University. His current main research focus is health economics, specialising in estimating the returns to investment from interventions aimed at reducing the burden of disease. Read more.
Associate Professor Rohan Borschmann is a Principal Research Fellow at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. His research focuses on the mental health of adolescents and marginalised young people, with particular expertise in self-harm, substance use and antisocial behaviour during adolescence. Read more.
Professor James Scott leads the Child and Youth Research Group at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. His research interests include prevention and intervention strategies in youth mental health. Read more.
Professor Harvey Whiteford is a psychiatrist and expert in psychiatric epidemiology and in mental health policy and services. He is Chair in Population Mental Health at the University of Queensland Read more.
Dr Moreno-Betancur is a Senior Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. She leads research that focuses on the development of statistical methods that are motivated by the issues arising in clinical and population health research, with particular focus in the areas of causal inference, missing data and survival analysis. Read more.
Twitter: @_MargaritaMB
Dr Margie Peden is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Global Injury Programme at the George Institute for Global Health. Margie’s work focuses on how to prevent unintentional injuries, particularly in resource-strapped countries. Read more.
Twitter: @margiepeden
Russell Viner Professor of Adolescent Health at the UCL Institute of Child Health in London, a paediatrician and adolescent physician working with young people with diabetes at University College Hospital and he directs the Department of Health Obesity Policy Research Unit. Read more.
Twitter: @russellviner
Professor David Burgner is a paediatric infectious diseases clinician scientist. He has considerable experience of using data linkage, large population-derived and high-risk cohorts to understand the early development of cardiovascular and metabolic risk. Read more.
Twitter: @BurgnerDave
David Wilson is a Professor of Data & Analytics with expertise in modelling, health economics, and data science. Read more.
Coordinator
Molly O’Sullivan is an experienced research coordinator, health communicator, and program manager with an extensive and varied history of working in public health and clinical trials within the paediatric and adolescent research field. Molly has expertise in youth engagement, health and research communications with a focus on research impact to optimise the application of research into policy and practice as well as ensuring research is accessible and useful for the community.
Molly coordinated the Lancet commission on adolescent health and wellbeing, which innovatively engaged young people in its function. Her role continues to prioritise novel ways of engaging youth.
Emerging Leaders Network
The Emerging Leaders Network (ELN) of the Centre of Research Excellence for Driving Global Investment in Adolescent Health includes PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and young professionals working in adolescent health. The ELN is a mechanism to encourage professional development via peer-to-peer learning and mentoring and further develop research skills with a goal of fostering young researchers and professionals in adolescent health to achieve independent funding and high level outputs.
Aaron Miatke completed a Bachelor of Human Movement in 2011 and Bachelor of Health Science (Honours) in 2016. Since then, he has worked as a research assistant on various research projects focused on physical activity, biomechanics and adolescent health. Aaron has recently started a PhD investigating empirical reallocation of time and the effects of these choices.
Aaron’s key research interests include time use, physical activity, and modifiable risk factors of NCDs.
Aaron is a member of the NCDs and NCD risks workstream.
Alex Thomas is currently undertaking a Masters of Biostatistics with the Biostatics Consortium of Australia (BCA) through Monash University and has a keen interest in data driven and qualitative approaches to resolving health inequity. Alex completed his Bachelor of Psychological Science in 2016 with Griffith University in Queensland, taking an interest in cognitive neuroscience and community mental health. Throughout his career, Alex has worked in a range of community mental health and emergency relief organisations as a support worker.
His interests include justice health, adolescent health, sexual health, mathematical modelling and statistical analysis. Read more.
Alex will be supporting all workstreams.
Dr Amy Peden is a Research Fellow and lecturer in Injury Prevention, Epidemiology and Control within the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at UNSW. Her research focuses on drowning prevention, with a focus on regional and remote communities, rivers, alcohol and social determinants of health.
Prior to commencing with UNSW Amy worked in the NGO sector as national manager of research and policy with Royal Life Saving Society – Australia, where her research and advocacy work saw her regularly appearing in the media. She completed her PhD at James Cook University on the prevention of river drowning. Amy holds a Master in Public Policy from the University of Sydney. She has published widely on the topic of drowning prevention and holds a position on the Australasian Injury Prevention Network Executive. Read more.
Amy is a member of the injury workstream.
Twitter: @amyepeden
After a 15-year clinical career as a physiotherapist, Dot started a PhD at UniSA in 2015. Her thesis presented a case for using compositional data analysis for time-use data (e.g., physical activity, sleep, sedentary behaviour). Dot commenced a co-funded NHMRC/Heart Foundation Early Career Fellowship in 2019 to explore how machine learning optimization methods can be used to describe optimal time use for health and wellbeing. Read more.
Key interests include:
- Understanding the relationships between time-use behaviours and health/wellbeing.
- Understanding the inter-dependencies between time-use and diet behaviours.
Dot is a member of the NCDs and NCD risks workstream.
Dr Farnaz Sabet is a General Practitioner with extensive experience in Global Health practice and policy. She recently completed her PhD, looking at “Evaluating the Outcomes of Participatory Women’s Groups for Pregnant Adolescents” using data from six trials and qualitative research from the state of Jharkhand, India.
Farnaz’ research interests include enhancing the outcomes for girl adolescents living in contexts of high gender inequality.
Twitter: @farnazs
Jackson Newberry-Dupé completed a Bachelor of Psychology (Hons 1) from the University of Newcastle in 2018. His honours thesis was a qualitative study exploring the lived experience perspective of adults who self-harmed in adolescence but had found a way to cease their self-harm behaviours. After graduation he worked as a social consultant and from 2020 worked as a research assistant at the University of New England, assisting with analysis of community perceptions of healthcare interactions following suicide attempts and suicide bereavement. This research resulted in a report for the National Suicide Prevention Advisor and National Suicide Prevention Taskforce.
Jackson commenced a PhD with UOM and MCRI in September 2020. His project has two elements. Firstly, to explore the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on child and adolescent mental health presentations to the emergency department. Secondly, to explore challenges and facilitators associated with implementation of an app-based suicide safety planning intervention for adolescents presenting to the emergency department following a suicide attempt. Read more.
Dr Jessica Kerr holds joint positions at University of Otago, Christchurch and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne. She has expertise in the fields of adolescent and adult nutrition, obesity, cardiovascular and mental health (with special interests in personality).
Jess’s current research interests include obesity epidemiology; communicable disease epidemiology; and premature mortality. I have expertise on a number of topics, including: predictors and consequences of lifetime obesity; novel interventions for adolescent overweight; dietary impacts on mental health and on cardiovascular disease markers; with more recent work streams focused on global child and adolescent communicable diseases, and working to build the TIME Consortium (The International Mortality in Early life Consortium) to harmonize mature cohort studies and examine risk factors for premature mortality. Read more.
Twitter: @jessica__kerr
Karly Cini is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics, supported by a NHMRC postgraduate scholarship and a top-up scholarship from the Centre for Research Excellence – Driving Global Investment in Adolescent Health.
Karly has been a research assistant at the Centre for Adolescent Health since 2010, following the completion of her Master’s in clinical epidemiology and has run both domestic and international research projects, overseeing all aspects of project management, data management, and analysis. Since 2018, Karly has held a research position at the Burnet Institute, giving her further opportunity to use her background in epidemiology and project management to focus on key global health projects. One such project was co-leading the first comprehensive profile of Adolescent Health in Myanmar, a Burnet-led project, in collaboration with the Centre for Adolescent Health, and international partners such as the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Myanmar Ministry of Health and Sports, and UN agencies.
Karly’s research interest is on the epidemiology of non-communicable diseases and their risk factors in adolescents worldwide. Her PhD focuses on adiposity as a risk factor in adolescence. How we measure this important risk; global data coverage for key measures; and what is needed to strengthen measurement and reporting – particularly in low resource settings – in partnership with stakeholders.
Karly is a member of the NCDs and NCD risks workstream.
Twitter: @karly_fc
Kate Francis has completed a Masters of Biostatistics and works as a biostatistician with the Centre for Adolescent Health and the Clinical Epidemiology Biostatistics Unit, at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. Prior to completing studies in biostatistics and working at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Kate worked for over a decade as research fellow and project manager on a variety of behavioural and health research projects for universities and not‐for‐profit organisations.
Kate has a specific interest in research methods and statistics. Read more.
Kate will be supporting all workstreams.
Dr Kritika Poudel is a public health epidemiologist with a background in clinical nursing. She completed a PhD major in community health nursing in March 2020 from Hokkaido University, Japan. During her PhD, she developed a health behavior model that identifies important factors associated with health beliefs and provides directions for targeting effective interventions during adolescence. In 2021 Kritika moved to Melbourne, Australia and continued her research career at the Disability and Health Unit of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. Simultaneously, she holds a Research Officer position under the supervision of Prof. Christine East at the Judith Lumley Centre within the School of Nursing and Midwifery at La Trobe University. Through these two roles, Kritika’s current research projects focus on analysing the determinants of the health gap between people with and without disabilities along with improving the perinatal health and wellbeing of women. Read more.
Twitter: @kpoudel01
Krystina Wallis is a Research Officer coordinating the National Adolescent Mental Health Surveys (NAMHS) project in Indonesia, Kenya and Vietnam. The project aims to gather nationally representative data to understand prevalence of mental disorders alongside risk and protective factors and service utilisation in adolescents.
Krystina is a registered psychologist who is passionate about mental health promotion and equitable and accessible mental health services especially in the context of supporting young people. Krystina has hands-on mental health experience delivering psychological assessment and treatment within community and hospital settings to support health behaviour change, depression and anxiety recovery. Krystina has previously worked in project management roles within mental health organisations and in management consulting.
Krystina is a member of the mental Health workstream and has specific research interest in adolescent mental disorder prevalence, mental health risk and protective factors and service utilisation in LMICs, and the impact of COVID-19 on mental health in adolescents in LMICs.
Lindsay Pearce completed her Master of Public Health at the University of British Columbia (2017) and an undergraduate degree in Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University (2015) in Vancouver, Canada. She moved to Melbourne in January 2020 to join the Justice Health Unit (University of Melbourne) after several years coordinating and conducting research on issues relating to the opioid overdose crisis in British Columbia, Canada. Throughout her early career, Lindsay’s research and work has focused on the health and health care experiences of vulnerable populations including people who use drugs, people living with HIV and Hepatitis C, homeless and street-involved youth, and people exposed to the justice system. She is interested in the application of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to elucidate the stories of these populations and drive evidence-informed health system change. Read more.
Twitter: @lindsayapearce and @JHU_UoM
Dr Lucas Calais Ferreira completed a PhD in Epidemiology and has expertise in traditional and genetic epidemiologic methods applied to observational study designs, and quantitative data analysis using Stata and R. Read more.
Lucas is a member of the adolescent health and justice workstream. His research aims to investigate the epidemiology of young people with a history of contact with the justice system; identify modifiable risk factors for morbidity and mortality in the youth justice population; inform future health interventions to prevent poor health outcomes in this cohort.
Margaretha has worked as a lecturer in the Faculty of Psychology at Universitas Airlangga in Indonesia and as a professional Counsellor for children and adolescents.
Margaretha’s specific research interests include mental health of school-aged children and adolescents, developmental psychopathology, and forensic psychology, specifically violence and risk of reoffending.
Dr Monika Raniti is an early career researcher and psychologist working at the intersection of adolescent development, mental health promotion and prevention, and education. She has undertaken several policy-relevant studies related to the determinants of youth mental health and the implementation of whole-school approaches to health and wellbeing in schools including for WHO, UNESCO, UNDESA and the Victoria Department of Education and Training. She currently holds positions a Research Fellow at the Centre for Adolescent Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and as an Honorary Research Fellow and postgraduate Subject Co-ordinator (Mental Health and Young People) in the Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne. Read more.
Monika is a member of the mental health workstream and her research aims to understand the risk, protective, and contextual factors that contribute to the development of common mental health problems in adolescents in order to develop effective and sustainable preventative interventions and build the capacity of the education and health systems to promote mental health and prevent common mental disorder.
Dr Patricia (Trish) Cullen is a provisionally registered psychologist and National Health and Medical Research Council Early Career Fellow in the School of Population Health at UNSW. Her research spans public health, psychology and implementation science. Incorporating multi-methodological approaches, my research centers on co-design, implementation and evaluation of optimal care for women and young people with a focus on integrating trauma and violence informed care in health settings. Read more.
Trish is a member of the injury workstream.
Twitter: @trish_acullen
Dr Peijin Hu completed her PhD in the area of child and adolescent health at the Peking University Health Science Center. She participated in several nationwide surveys on constitution, health and health risk behaviours of children and adolescents in China, and has experience on study design, implementation and data analysis.
Peijin has published research in the areas of smoking behaviors and secular changes of growth and nutrition in Chinese children and adolescents.
Her specific research interests in health risk behaviours of children and adolescents; growth and development and related health risk factors of children and adolescents; school health policy and management.
Seth Westhead is an Aboriginal Research Associate with Wardliparingga Aboriginal Health Equity Theme, South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). Through his research work, Seth strives to better understand how social and cultural determinants drive health and social inequities within society. He seeks to better equip Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities with tools and evidence for public health advocacy and enable the translation of research into meaningful action. Read more.
Seth’s research interests include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing, social and cultural determinants of health and mental health and wellbeing.
Seth is member of the Indigenous adolescent health and wellbeing workstream.
Dr Shilpa Aggarwal is a child and adolescent psychiatrist based in India. She received her basic training in Medicine and Psychiatry from leading hospitals in Delhi and Mumbai, India and completed advanced training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry from Australia. She is a passionate advocate for mental health for all and works towards developing the infrastructure to support research in low- and middle- income countries. Her research involves designing novel ways of delivery of mental health in resource limited settings.
Shilpa’s areas of interest include self-harm, pervasive developmental disorders, early psychosis, school mental health, and public mental health.
Dr Yanhui Dong is a researcher at the Institute of Child and Adolescent Health at the School of Public Health at Peking University. His career has focused on the nationwide epidemiological investigation of health problems occurring in children and adolescents exploring risk factors, relevant reasons and mechanisms.
Dong’s key research interests include the environmental and genetic mechanisms of chronic diseases and infectious diseases in children and adolescents.
Twitter: @Dong_Yanhui
Harvey Zou is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Child and Adolescent Health at the School of Public Health at Peking University. Harvey has a PhD in nutrition from Peking University, and his research focuses on adolescent health and environmental factors in early life. As a PI, Harvey has received 11 grants including five projects from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Education and National Health Commission. Harvey has published over 40 peer review papers and participated in the development and revision of 2 national policies and 3 standards on child and adolescent health. As a key member, Harvey’s group won the first prize of Science and Technology of Chinese Preventive Medicine Association in 2019, and the Pediatric Medicine Award of Soong Ching Ling in 2019. Read more.
CREYATE (CRE Youth Advocates TEam)
Objectives
The CRE is proud to have appointed a partnership group of young advocates. CREYATE is a group of young people from Australia, China and Indonesia with varying levels of experience in research and advocacy. CREYATE was formed to provide a youth perspective to the CRE, and to assist in ensuring the research is relevant to the lived experience of young people and aligns with existing advocacy efforts.
The objectives for this group are to:
- Ensure youth perspectives inform the CRE work plan.
- Facilitate communication with young people, advocates and their organisations about the work of the CRE.
- Discussion of further priority areas for the CREs research.
- Ensure research outputs are useful to the work of youth advocates.
- Advise on strategies for CRE program areas to engage meaningfully with young people.
- Support CRE partnerships with young advocates, their networks and organisations.
Angelica Ojinnaka (she/her) is a researcher and youth advocate, with expertise in the public health, youth mental health, advocacy, and policy sector on both national and international forums. Angelica is a Master of Research Candidate at Western Sydney University, exploring children and young people’s experiences within the Australian service system. Her interests include addressing intersecting marginalisation, health inequities, and youth leadership. Angelica is a founding member of the African Australian Youth Suicide Prevention Group, and recipient of the 2021 NSW Premier’s Youth Medal. She is a Nigerian second-generation migrant, currently living on the Wattamattagal land of the Darug Nation.
Twitter: @OAngelica_
Diandra Priambodo (she/her) is a clinical year medical student at Universitas Indonesia with experience in medical research. Her growing passion for adolescent health in the past year has connected her to peers in the area. Currently she is active in different groups, including the Indonesian Adolescent Health Association (AKAR Indonesia) and The SMART TEENS Project (The Social Skills Mastery and Resilience Training against Tobacco and E-Cigarette using E-Learning and Social Media Project) under the Indonesian Pediatric Society. She also writes content for Reprodukasi, where she advocates for accessible sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education for Indonesian adolescents. Outside of health, Diandra’s love for connecting with people drives her eagerness to be active in the Australia-Indonesia space where she is presently involved with the Australia-Indonesia Youth Association (AIYA) and Asia Options.
Twitter: @deepriambodo
Effy Abbsar (She/Her) Effy currently lives in Clayton, on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong People. She is studying a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences at Monash University, majoring in psychology and mathematics with a philosophy minor. She is currently an ACCESS Monash Mentor and English and Mathematics MYLN tutor for the Department of Education and has worked with the City of Greater Dandenong as a peer-research assistant. Her research on pregnancy infrastructure and gender equality was presented at the 2020 International Conference of Undergraduate Research, and she plans to pursue further research through a Masters in data/computer science.
Ivy Craw (she/her) is a Project Assistant and musician currently living on the Wathaurong land of the Kulin Nation. On the sidelines, Ivy is passionate about using community events as conduits to enable support services to engage with young people directly. In this space, she volunteers at farmers markets with the Queenscliff Rural Australians for Refugees and works in the music industry as a youth advocate/artist in local rock outfit ‘Porpoise Spit’.
Luo Li (she/her) currently lives in China, is a Master of Public Health student, with a biomedical background from the university of Melbourne. She is an aspiring public-health focused graduate researcher and advocate who is also a passionate volunteer who has been involved in some non-for-profit organisations and university communities. Ashley is the current vice-president of Melbourne Population and Global Health Student Society, which is dedicated to improving student life at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.
Jasmine Elliott (she/her) is a 4th year medical student at Monash University on Wurundjeri Land but calls Gladstone (QLD) home. Her lived experience with mental illness in regional Australia has given Jasmine insight into the impact of fragmented care on recovery and an appreciation for the importance of strong transitions between acute and community, and youth and adult services. She is a Young Leader with the CHF Youth Health Forum, member of the headspace National Youth Reference Group, eheadspace Peer Support Moderator and Chair of the Australian Medical Students’ Association Rural Health Committee.
Twitter: @all__that__jas
Sophia Garlick Bock (she/they) – currently lives on Gadigal land. Sophia has a background in psychology and criminology, and currently works as a Research and Evaluation Coordinator at ReachOut. Sophia’s interests include youth mental health, LGBTIQ+ health and comorbidity between mental health and drug and alcohol use. Sophia has been on both sides of co-design with young people and is extremely passionate about youth voices being amplified in research.
Twitter: @garlick_bock