Inside this issue:

Centre for Health Initiatives, University of Wollongong

October—December, 2012 Volume 3, Issue 4

CHI News

In 2012, CHI offered local schools the opportunity to apply for funding for a social marketing campaign to address a school based social or health issue. As well as receiving $2000 towards their projects, winning teams were provided with assistance from a CHI mentor to develop their campaign. Students from two local schools have introduced innovative activities to improve the health of their fellow students as a result of CHI’s Healthy Schools Illawarra. The HEALTH (Healthy Eating Adds Life to Humans) Team from The Illawarra Grammar School conducted a campaign to address unhealthy eating within their school, with a focus on unhealthy lunches and food brought from home. The students created recipe booklets with healthy meal ideas from students, brochures, and a healthy food demonstration for students. The team of Year 9 students Namika Parajuli, Quynh-Nhu Nguyen, Maria Kyriakoudes and Hanna Kim, was supported by teacher Mrs Jean Burton. The Corpus Christi Year 12 PEHPD students, including Andrew Hooper and Emily Meith, developed the Healthy Body/Healthy Mind Initiative, with the support of Ms Rachel Filan. The aim was to create a supportive and active environment for Year 12 students as they embarked on their HSC exams –encouraging exercise and healthy eating in order to reduce stress levels. Year 12 students were offered the chance to participate in a five-week fitness program; a range of exercise classes were offered before school and a variety of healthy breakfasts were made available. CHI’s Director, Prof Sandra Jones, said “The students’ enthusiasm and commitment to improving the health of their peers was really impressive. The CHI team really enjoyed working with these health professionals of the future. We look forward to running the competition again in 2013.” Students from both schools presented an overview of their campaigns and received certificates of achievement on Friday 30th November at the Centre for Health Initiatives.

Prof Sandra Jones and Laura Robinson from CHI with students from The Illawarra Gram-

mar School Page 1

CHI Healthy Schools Competition 2012

1

Profile of Deputy Director Dr Christopher Magee

2

Meet our Deputy Director Dr Chris Magee

2

Meet the New CHI Team Members

4

4

CHI Graduations 5

Stepping out...More than 1 Billion times

5

New CHI Grants 6

CHI in the Media 6

CHI in the Media - continued

7

Papers in Publication 8

Movember Treadmill Challenge

3

CHI Healthy Schools Competition 2012

Welcome to the final CHI Newsletter for 2012. It has been a busy three months (and a busy year) with lots of great achievements from CHI staff and students. We continue to win new research grants, complete ground-breaking projects and publish high-quality papers (details of some of which are in this newsletter).

Just as importantly, the CHI team continues to make a difference across the campus (including a Highly Commended Award for our cold and flu campaign - see page - 5 and look out for the results of the 2012 campaign in the next newsletter) and in the community (including being the wining team at the iC Health 'Movember Treadmill Challenge' - see page 3). I have also been fortunate to have some great opportunities to share CHI's research with the broader community - including being the Keynote Speaker at the ANPHA Symposium in Canberra on social marketing and alcohol, and joining the NSW Commissioner of Police to launch Operation Unite 2012.

This last quarter of 2012 has seen us welcome three new staff members (see page 4) with another three commencing in January, reflecting the continuing growth of CHI as a research leader in social marketing and health behaviour. This is my last newsletter for a while as the driver of the CHI-ship. I will be commencing my ARC Future Fellowship from 31 December and, while I will still be involved in strategy (and lots of research), I will be handing over the management of CHI to our very capable Deputy Director, Dr Christopher Magee. Chris will also be writing this column for the next four years and keeping you up to date with all the activities and successes of CHI. I will be writing a regular piece on my Fellowship Project - a multi-component community based intervention to address social norms around underage alcohol consumption. From all of us at CHI: we wish you a Merry Christmas and we look forward continuing to work with you in 2013.

A Note from the Director

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CHI News

CHI Director, Professor Sandra Jones

Profile of Deputy Director Dr Christopher Magee

As noted above the Director of the Centre for Health Initiatives (CHI), Professor Sandra Jones, begins her ARC Future Fellowship in 2013. As a result, Sandra will step down from many of her administration duties but will still remain actively involved in the strategic direction of the Centre. Dr Christopher Magee, who was seconded to the position of Deputy Director at CHI in April 2012, will assume the role of overseeing the day-to-day activities of the centre from January 2013 for the next four years. Christopher was awarded his PhD from the School of Psychology at the University of Wollongong in October 2008. His main research interests are in Health Psychology, in particular understanding the impact of sleep duration on the risk of chronic health conditions such as obesity and cardiovascular disease. Christopher also conducts research in the area of Occupational Health Psychology, focusing on the interactions between work-life balance and indicators of well-being. He is also interested in the use of contemporary statistical modelling approaches for analysing longitudinal data. This includes utilising techniques such as lagged panel mediation models and growth mixture modelling to better understand the relationships between behaviours (e.g., sleep) and health. Christopher has published more than 35 articles in peer reviewed journals, including leading international journals such as Obesity, Preventive Medicine, Journal of Personality, and Sleep Medicine. His current research investigating the relationship between sleep and obesity is supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant.”

Movember Treadmill Challenge

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Volume 3, Issue 4

The team consisted of, from right to left: Nick Corr, Lyn Phillipson, Ross Gordon, Katherine Butler, Laura Robinson, Kelly Andrews, Michael Chapman (Team Captain and treadmill ‘machine’), and Lance Barrie (Uwana Evers and Jo Telenta not pictured).

On the 29th November, the Centre for Health Initiatives entered a team of ten in the IC Health ‘Movember Treadmill Challenge’. This saw eight teams slog it out on the treadmill to raise much needed funds for male mental health awareness and prostate cancer. The concept involved entering a team and scheduling running so that there was always somebody on the treadmill at any given time for the 6 hour duration! The most kilometres accumulated at 3pm that day won. The CHI team dug deep, both physically and financially to help raise over $500 for the event and snatch victory from the Innovation Campus businesses. The final results were: 1st place: CHI 70.76km 2nd Place: ACES 59.87km 3rd place: Resolve 57.98km

Katherine and Uwana

The winning treadmill with

decorations

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CHI News

Meet the New CHI Team Members

Michael Chapman Michael has a Bachelor of Science (Nutrition) and a Masters of Public Health (Nutrition), which he obtained in 2011 and 2012 (respectively). Michael has previously worked for The Disability Trust in Wollongong and is now working as a Research Assistant at CHI. Michael’s research interests are social marketing, nutrition & obesity, alcohol marketing, gambling marketing , policy and regulation, indigenous health, and disabilities. Nick Corr Nick recently graduated with a Bachelor of Medical and Health Sciences (Distinction) and has commenced work as a Research Assistant at CHI completing tasks such as data entry, literature reviews and administration. Nick’s research interests include alcohol, exercise and physical activity, indigenous health, and social marketing.

Katherine Butler Katherine has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Psychology and Population Health, and is currently undertaking Masters of Public Health. Katherine previously worked at the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing in the Tobacco Control Taskforce working on the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011, as well as project managing the de-velopment of NSW and WA GP Super Clin-ics. Within CHI, Katherine is working with Lyn Phillipson on two research projects on designing environments for Dementia pa-tients. Katherine is also taking the lead on the University Cold and Flu campaign, while Karen is on maternity leave. Katherine’s research interests are in behaviour change, social marketing, and in particular to the areas of pregnancy and early life, tobacco, alcohol consumption, physical activity, child-hood obesity, and cancer prevention and treatment.

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Volume 3, Issue 4

CHI Graduations

The University of Wollongong this week celebrated walking more than one billion steps as part of its involvement in the Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) – marking UOW as the most active university in the world. The GCC is a workplace health and wellbeing initiative which encourages workers around the world to sustain a healthy lifestyle over a 16-week program by measuring the amount of steps taken per day. The GCC celebration was held alongside the launch of the start of Safe Work Australia Week 2012 with the Workplace Health & Safety (WHS) Awards presentation. CHI was awarded a Highly Commended for the 2011 UOW Cold and Flu campaign for our innovative approach to raising awareness at the University on preventing the spread of influenza and other communicable diseases. Team members included: Sandra Jones, Lyn Phillipson, Karen Larsen-Truong, Lance Barrie, Joshua Beard and Jessica Iannella.

A number of CHI staff graduated this week including Dr Lyn Phillipson (PhD), Julie Hall (Graduate Certificate in Social Marketing) and Nick Corr (Bachelor of Medical and Health Sciences with Distinction). From the left: Dr Lyn Phillipson, Julie Hall.

Stepping Out….. More than 1 Billion Times

October 2012

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CHI News

New CHI Grants

Title: Sleep quality, screen-time, and physical activity in older adolescents Funder: Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute Small Grants 2012 Amount: $7,800 Researchers: Dr Christopher Magee, Dr Dylan Cliff, Dr Anne-Maree Parrish, Dr Stewart Vella. Summary: This research will examine the longitudinal associations between sleep quality, physical activity, and screen-time in adolescents. This is an important area of population health research given that these behaviours are implicated in a range of chronic health conditions such as obesity and cardiovascular disease. Furthermore, it is plausible that these behaviours interact, since poor sleep may promote lower levels of physical activity and more screen-time because of greater daytime sleepiness, with physical activity and screen-time also having the potential to affect sleep quality. Understanding how these behaviours are related could inform the development of more effective health promotion programs to reduce the risk of health problems such as obesity.

CHI in the Media

Professor Jones was interviewed about the pressure on people to drink alcohol at work events (Triple J Radio).

Professor Jones was interviewed about the ways that junk food advertisers target children (Illawarra Mercury and ABC Illawarra).

Professor Jones was interviewed regarding a national survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics which found Aus-tralians are drinking and smoking less but putting on weight like never before (The Conversation).

Professor Jones was interviewed about proposals for monitoring of alcohol sales to underage drinkers, and calls for toughening up and enforcing the legislation around secondary supply (i.e., adults providing alcohol to underage drink-ers) (Triple J Radio).

Professor Jones was interviewed following a posting on her UOW blog about buying alcohol on group buying sites (Sun Herald and Sunday Age).

Dr Samantha Thomas was quoted in a story about government proposal to ban soft drinks to children under 12 (Illawarra Mercury).

Professor Jones was interviewed about her research into secondary supply of alcohol to children and teens which she presented at APSAD 2012 conference (Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age, Canberra Times and 3AW).

November 2012—Continued

December 2012

November 2012—Continued

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Volume 3, Issue 4

Professor Jones research presented at this year’s Conference of the Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs in reference to the lack of barriers in place to stop under 18-year-olds from being engaged by clever marketing (B&T weekly) and re-published (Hospitality Today Magazine).

Professor Jones research into alcohol and schoolies week was referred to in an article on schoolies (The West Australian).

Professor Jones was interviewed about the effectiveness of narrowcast campaigns for sensitive health issues (Triple J Radio).

Professor Jones co-authored a story with FARE'S Michael Thorn about the preventative health agenda re alcohol (Crikey).

Professor Jones was interviewed about her research into secondary supply of alcohol to children and teens which she presented at APSAD 2012 conference (ABC Illawarra).

Professor Jones was interviewed about the findings and recommendations of the parliamentary inquiry into Foetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (ABC Rural Radio).

December 2012

Professor Jones was interviewed regarding the harms associated with consumption of alcohol energy drinks, and calls for banning or regulation of alcohol energy drinks in Australia (Marie Clare). Professor Jones was interviewed regarding her research into underage alcohol consumption, and being invited to partici-pate in the launch of Operation Unite 2012 (ABC III/ ABC Southern). CHI's research into alcohol brand websites was featured, including an interview of Professor Jones regarding the ineffectiveness of age verification entry pages (The Daily Telegraph). Professor Jones joined the NSW Commissioner of Police and the Minister for Police in officially launching Operation Unite 2012. Professor Jones speech at the launch was reported (The Daily Telegraph). Professor Jones was interviewed by Channel 7 News about a nationwide crackdown on anti social behaviour fuelled by excessive drinking. The story was also covered by Channel 10 News, Sky News, WIN News, Illawarra Mercury and ABC. Professor Jones was interviewed regarding the launch of the NSW and ACT Alcohol Policy Alliance (WIN News). Professor Jones was interviewed regarding harms associated with alcohol energy drinks (ABC Sydney, Illawarra and New-castle).

ITAMS Building 233 Innovation Campus University of Wollongong NSW 2522

Phone: (02) 4221 5106 Fax: (02) 4221 3370 Website: www.uow.edu.au/health/chi

The Centre for Health Initiatives (CHI) is a Research Strength of the University of Wollongong. It is composed of appointed academic and general staff, affiliated academic staff, and research students.

CHI prioritises the conduct of research that will impact on professional practice, policy or individual health behaviours and facilitates the

application of this research in the relevant organisations or community environments.

CHI News is published quarterly. The deadline for submission to the next issue of

CHI News will be the 19 March 2013. Please contact Alisha Cork

alishac@uow.edu.au

University of Wollongong

Page 8

Papers Accepted for Publication Cridland, E., Jones, S.C., Magee, C.A., Caputi, P. (in press). Family focused autism spectrum disorder research: A

review of the utility of family systems approaches. Autism (accepted 2/12/2012.). Bonney, A., Magee, C.A., Pearson, R. (in press). Cross-sectional survey of older patients’ views regarding multi-

disciplinary care for chronic conditions in general practice. Australian Journal of Primary Health (accepted 24/10/2012).

Jones, S.C., & Iverson D., (in press) Pandemic Influenza: A Global Challenge for Social Marketing. Health (accepted

04/10/12). Jones, S.C., Waters, L.., Byrne, F., Iverson, D., Sutherland, M., Gold, J., & Puplick, C. (in press) “Body bags ready”:

media coverage of avian influenza in Australia. Health (accepted 04/10/12).