Congratulations to our NCOIS Researcher, Dr Nicole Nathan who has received the HMRI Early Career Research Award for her work in delivering evidence-based interventions to lower childhood obesity.
HMRI is a partnership between the University of Newcastle, Hunter New England Health, and the community. The HMRI Awards recognise outstanding efforts and achievements of individuals and teams who drive and support the opportunities that health and medical research bring to the wellbeing of our community.
The recipients of the 2021 HMRI Awards for Research Excellence are:
The HMRI Newcastle and Sydney Foundation Research Team Award – The Daughters and Dads Active and Empowered team
Early Career Research Award – Dr Nicole Nathan
The Mid-Career Research Award – Professor Vanessa McDonald
The Research Excellence Award – Professor Michael Breakspear
HMRI Director Professor Mike Calford recognised 2021 as a challenging year, in which these HMRI researchers had continued to excel, stating, ‘All of these researchers are addressing priority health areas for our community and are global research leaders.’
About Dr Nicole Nathan’s work:
Early-Career Award winner Dr Nicole Nathan is described by HMRI as a 4.5 years post PhD researcher with more than 15 years’ experience as a health promotion manager with Hunter New England Population Health. Her primary role is to lead a multidisciplinary team to deliver childhood obesity prevention programs to the community. Dr Nathan’s multi-award winning work on childhood obesity prevention programs has now been rolled out to over 600,000 students across NSW. Her work has led to children in the Hunter region having a lower incidence of obesity than the rest of the Australian population. Find out more about Dr Nicole Nathan’s work here.
NCOIS would also like to congratulate Early Career Research Award finalists; Dr Jessie Sutherland (Reproductive health researcher with a particular focus in the field of reproductive biology, infertility, and disease), Dr Rebecca Wyse (Behavioural scientist with a career objective of reversing increasing population rates of childhood obesity) and Good for Kids finalists in the HMRI Newcastle and Sydney Foundation Research Team Award, The Physically Active Children in Education (Pace) team (a program that aims to improve the delivery of physical activity by teachers in primary schools).
Watch the recording of the Awards ceremony.