Biography and expertise
Biography
Christina is a registered nurse and an expert on ageing, family carers and caregiving, and health services research. Christina holds a conjoint research academic appointment at Northern NSW Local Health District, leading the strategic development of patient care and health services research across 12 hospitals. Christina is the Principal Investigator on a successful NHMRC Partnership Grant, and a Chief Investigator on two major NHMRC Category 1 grants focused on enhancing emergency nursing care across Australia.
Christina is a member of SCU's Research Clusters:
- Catchments, Coasts and Communities
Research
Christina is a leading international researcher on building capacity and capability among family carers of older people with complex chronic disease, and social prescribing programs. Christina has a proven track record in supporting healthcare professionals to conduct and translate research into practice, resulting in high-quality accessible services that support better health outcomes. With a national and international research profile, she has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles, government submissions, and reports. Christina has secured over $7 million in research funding, including $4.9 million in the last 5 years. Christina's research has also supported significant recommendations and frameworks, such as the Productivity Commission Inquiry "Caring for Older Australians" and the National Carer Recognition Framework.
Christina established and is co-lead of the FoH’s new research theme: Resilient Ageing in Supportive Environments (RAISE) and a member of the CCC Cluster. RAISE brings together researchers, international collaborators, industry partners, and those with lived experience to tackle challenges related to ageing and caregiving.
Supervision
Christina currently supports 9 HDR students, 5 as primary supervisor. She encourages students, early career researchers and clinicians to publish early.
Teaching
Christina has extensive teaching, and curriculum review and development experience in undergraduate and postgraduate programs including, the first Australian: Primary Health Care Transition program for new graduate nurses, Community Health Care Transition program for new graduate nurses, Masters Primary Health Care program, and Postgraduate program for internationally qualified nurses seeking Australian registration.
Christina works closely with SCU’s International Office and overseas partners to successfully secure DFAT New Colombo Plan (NCP) Grants, delivering global work-integrated learning (WIL) opportunities. To date, 40 students have participated in primary healthcare placements in Belagavi, India.
Other
Christina's work with international nurses and undergraduate programs continues to grow. The establishment of several key collaborations have resulted in sustainable and ongoing curricula research nexus, including a digital mobile program to support nurses' leadership skills in primary health care and chronic illness management at several universities in India.
Links
Honours
Organisational affiliations
Past affiliations
Highlights - Output
Journal article
Australian link worker social prescribing programs: An integrative review
Published 11/11/2024
PloS one, 19, 11, 0309783
Link worker social prescribing programs are gaining recognition in Australia for addressing health and social needs outside routine medical care. The evaluation of these programs is essential for informing future social prescribing programs, research and evolving policy. How-ever, diverse outcome evalua-tion measures present challenges for benchmarking across link worker social prescribing programs. An integrative review was conducted to identify and describe outcome domains and measures, and the methodological approaches and evaluation designs of link worker social prescribing programs in Australia. Comprehensive searches of the literature on link worker social prescribing programs in Australia were conducted across 14 electronic databases. In order to reduce the risk of bias, study selection and data extraction were conducted independently by multiple authors, and included studies under-went quality and risk of bias assessment using the standardised Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Six studies met the inclusion criteria. Outcome domains were categorised into ‘person-level’, ‘system-level’ and ‘program implementation’ domains. Despite the variation in partici- pant groups, the ‘person-level’ domains of global well-being and social well-being were con- sistently evaluated. While measurement tools varied significantly, the WHO Quality of Life Brief Assessment and short-form UCLA Loneliness Scale were most commonly applied. At the system level, health service utilisation was primarily evaluated. This integrative review reports on the current state of evidence in Australia, with the potential to track changes and trends over time. Developing a core outcome set, incorporating stakeholder and consumer contributions for benchmarking aligned with the healthcare landscape is recommended. The findings may guide the refining of social prescribing initiatives and future research, ensuring methodological robustness and alignment with individual and community needs.