Associate ProfessorKatrina Champion

Dr Katrina Champion is an Associate Professor in the Sydney School of Public Health and is a member of the Matilda Centre, a Flagship in the Faculty of Medicine and Health. She is Program Lead of Adolescent Risk Behaviours and Mental Health Research at the Matilda Centre and holds a prestigious Sydney Horizon Fellowship focusing on innovative approaches to improve the physical and mental health of Australian adolescents.

Dr Champion works at the nexus of disease prevention and mental health, with a focus on the bidirectional relationships between poor mental health and unhealthy lifestyle. She develops, evaluates and disseminates digital interventions to improve both physical and mental health in adolescents.

As part of an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship, Dr Champion spent two years at the Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University (Chicago, US). During this time, and in collaboration with more than 20 researchers across Australia and the US, she led the development of Health4Life, an eHealth multiple health behaviour change intervention to reduce chronic disease risk and improve mental health among school students.

Her Horizon project is continuing this work to refine digital interventions for adolescents to address the Big 6 risk factors of physical inactivity, poor diet, alcohol use, smoking/vaping, screen time and poor sleep, as well as establishing a new study in high schools to improve the update of evidence-based prevention policy and practice. Dr Champion is also leading a MRFF-funded project to develop a new parent-based intervention specifically designed to improve health outcomes of adolescents experiencing socio-economic disadvantage.