Medical Research

What are your research interests?

• Health providers: Identifying strategies to help health care providers to incorporate new evidence-based approaches. This work has an emphasis on care for stroke, cancer, diabetes and chronic pain. 
• Smoking Care: Identifying what kinds of assistance are effective in helping people to quit successfully, and making sure that health care professionals offer this assistance at every opportunity.
• Healthy Behaviours: Understanding patterns of behavior that result in healthy versus unhealthy lifestyles
• Psychosocial Care: Identifying what kinds of information and support are needed to reduce the distress associated with chronic diseases such as cancer
• Indigenous Health: Working with Aboriginal people and Aboriginal health services to improve the identification and management of chronic diseases such as diabetes

Why did you get into research?

As a child I loved to read and always wanted to understand what made people tick. As I grew, I gradually understood that health and education are fundamental to a successful society, but not everyone has the same opportunity to live a healthy life. I want to produce research that contributes to improving the current and future health of all members of our community. 

What would be the ultimate goal for your research?

The ultimate goal of my research would be to see quicker and stronger responses from our society that will help us all to live healthier lives. Preventing ill health and promoting good health should be fundamental to all decisions made by health systems, governments and businesses.

Biography

Professor Christine Paul BA (Hons) PhD is a behavioural scientist with experience in the development and evaluation of strategies for achieving behavioural change on an individual, system and population level. Throughout her career she has worked closely with industry as a research academic, initially in cancer control together with Cancer Council NSW.

Much of Professor Paul’s published work has been focused on cancer control, with an emphasis on the trial and translation of effective behaviour change strategies.

Recent work as a research associate with University of Newcastle and a research fellow with HMRI involves applying behavioural approaches in large multisite intervention studies in the fields of support for lung cancer patients, diabetes care, stroke care and reducing smoking among disadvantaged groups. More recently her work has incorporated psychosocial care for cancer patients, exploring issues of modes and models of care and access to cancer care.

Professor Paul has also received a number of awards for her dedication to the supervision of research students and has a strong focus on building the next generation of behavioural researchers.

Future Focus

My future focus is on better understanding the things that will help health services to focus on healthy behaviours as part usual care for all people.  

Specialised / Technical Skills

• Behavioural trials including cluster and stepped wedge methods
• Implementation science
• Health behavior measurement

Affiliations

• PRC Health Behaviour
• HMRI Health Behaviour
• Hunter Cancer Research Alliance