Pain Smart Education research team

Isabelle Bogard is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. Her research is linked to the Pain Smart Project, investigating pain in adolescents and the integration of pain and lifestyle education into schools. She is also a physiotherapist at a tertiary hospital chronic pain service in Sydney, having completed a Bachelor of Applied Science (Physiotherapy) (Honours Class I) in 2018 at the University of Sydney.

Laura Montgomery is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. Her research is linked to the Pain Smart Project, but also on prognosis of musculoskeletal pain in children and adolescents.

Tiê Yamato is a Physiotherapist and Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. Tiê is the coordinator of the Pain Smart study. Her research seeks to understand musculoskeletal pain in children and adolescents as well as investigate interventions to improve wellbeing in this population. She leads Centre for Pain, Health and Lifestyle, a collaboration with over 20 master and PhD students and 2 senior researchers. Her work has been cited in clinical practice guidelines for musculoskeletal pain and been awarded in important conferences in the field.

Steven Kamper is a registered Physiotherapist and Professor of Allied Health at Uni of Sydney and Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health District, continuously supported by NHMRC fellowships from 2008-25. At Nepean Blue Mountains he is responsible for integrating research into services across the Local Health District. This involves training and operational support for clinicians, and work with executive and management on systems to support research embedded in care delivery.

A/Prof Williams (PhD, 2013; MPthy, BAppSc) is a health services researcher with skills in clinical and implementation trials, qualifications in exercise science, physiotherapy, and postgraduate training in biostatistics. He is an NHMRC Investigator Fellow and has served as Program Manager in the Capacity Building Team (Hunter New England Local Health District, since 2016) and Research Development Fellow (Mid North Coast Local Health District, since 2021).

Dr Nathan is a qualified Health and Physical Education teacher with PhD in Health Behaviour (2016). She currently holds a MRFF Investigator Grant (2021-25) and previously held a NHMRC TRIP Fellowship (2017-19), and a prestigious Sir Winston Churchill Fellowship (2017) to undertake implementation research in schools. For >20years Dr Nathan has been a health promotion practitioner at Hunter New England Population Health (HNEPH), leading the implementation and evaluation of Australia’s largest population-wide child obesity prevention service and research trials in community settings, in particular in schools (Good for Kids. Good for Life).

Alexandra Martiniuk is currently a Professor (Epidemiology) at the University of Sydney in the Faculty of Medicine and Health. She is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health (since 2005) and an Associate with WriteMEDIA, Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and Senior Researcher in Residence at the NSW Rural Doctors Network. Martiniuk is funded by a 5 year, NHMRC Investigator Grant (January 2021-2026) focused on improving health for children: through implementation and health services research to close treatment gaps. She is a previous NHMRC Translating Research into Practice (TRIP) Fellow, and previous Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Fellow. She has worked 2 years of the past 5 years -and has taken three full maternity leaves in the past 8 years and then held part-time appointments (0.2-0.5 FTE) between children. Martiniuk returned to full- time academic work on January 1, 2021.

Prof Wolfenden is a health promotion practitioner, behavioural (health promotion) and implementation scientist. He is Director of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Implementation for Community Chronic Disease Prevention, Co-Director of WHO Collaborating Centre for Non-Communicable Diseases Program Implementation and is on the leadership executive of the $18 million NHMRC funded Australian Prevention Partnership Centre. He has a co-appointment and is responsible for provision of chronic disease prevention services at Hunter New England Local Health District. Prof Wolfenden’s research seeks to reduce community chronic disease through policy evidence syntheses; trials of interventions to reduce chronic disease risks; and testing strategies to increase adoption and implementation and scale-up of evidence-based interventions.

James McAuley is NHMRC Leadership Fellow (L1), Professor at the Faculty of Medicine at UNSW and Senior Research Scientist at NeuRA. He is a global leader in pain education and the prevention and management of chronic pain. His research program is accommodated within the Centre for Pain IMPACT (Investigating Mechanisms of Pain to Advance Clinical Translation), which he founded and leads. The Centre, a collaboration between NeuRA, UNSW and University of Maryland, USA, supports >40 researchers including 4 senior researchers, 11 postdoctoral fellows and 25 staff/students and holds $17M in current funding.

Lise Hestbæk is a registered chiropractor and Professor of back pain research at Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark. The primary research focus is on musculoskeletal pain in childhood and adolescence, involving cohort studies, clinical trials, natural experiments and register based studies.

A/Prof Rogers completed a PhD in Biology (University of Sydney 2006) and then made a career change to biostatistics. He worked for the NSW Ministry of Health on research projects in epidemiology and primary prevention and graduated with a Master of Biostatistics in 2009 (University of Sydney). CIH Rogers has led the analysis for a large number of international multicentre clinical trials, resulting in high impact publications in journals such as The Lancet, BMJ, and New England Journal of Medicine. CIH Rogers is a commissioned expert statistical reviewer for PLOS Medicine and Lancet Respiratory Medicine. He has demonstrated experience in cluster randomised trials from conception to final analysis and brings this to this project.

Dr Angell is a health economist who holds positions as Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Systems Science at the George Institute for Global Health, UNSW Sydney and Senior Conjoint Lecturer at UNSW, Sydney. He holds a NHMRC Emerging Leadership Investigator Grant (Level 1) and has extensive public policy experience having worked as a Senior Economist at the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation (2013-2017) during his PhD studies and prior to that at NSW Treasury (2011-2013) and continues to act as a consultant for various local and international policy bodies. He is an early career researcher (PhD awarded October 2017) but holds multiple grants as CI and published in leading journals in his field, including first author publications in The Lancet (in press) and PLOS Medicine. Dr Angell is building an increasing international reputation in his field: he is a Commissioner on the Lancet Nigeria Commission and the lead technical advisor on discrete choice experiments for the health stream of research under the Anti-Corruption Evidence Consortium funded by UK aid. He worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Health, University College London (2020-2021) and was a Visiting Scientist at Harvard Medical School (March-June 2019).

Building on his clinical experience as a senior physiotherapist in public hospital pain clinics, CI Pate’s PhD thesis (January 2020) built upon the growing evidence base for pain science education in children, specifically in terms of developing and testing an assessment tool for a child’s concept of pain. Initial testing of the psychometric properties of the developed assessment tool demonstrated that the Concept of Pain Inventory (COPI) is a brief, psychometrically sound tool to assess a child’s concept of pain. Since then, his research findings have incrementally grown this evidence base. For example, studies of COPI scores in adults, teenagers, parents, and physiotherapy students have been investigated in order to enable targeted pain science education. In 2021, CI Pate was CIA on a $10,000 seed grant where the project is being finalised and he is also CIB on a 2nd $10,000 internal UTS grant reviewing parental decision-making. He has increasingly developed independent research partnerships and networks. Primarily he is working on a wide range of research projects with Stanford University’s Biobehavioral Pediatric Pain Lab.

Career Summary: Dr Thompson is a Registered Nurse with a combined 14-years’ experience in clinical, academic and operational research leadership roles. Since September 2021, she is the inaugural Director of Research Operations for the Nepean and Blue Mountains Local Health District. She holds an NHMRC Investigator Grant (2021-2025) that combines her expertise in sepsis and women’s health and equity research in a postdoctoral program that aims to understand and address disparities in outcomes due to severe infection and sepsis, with a focus on women, sex-differences and underserved populations.

Dr Swain is an allied health practitioner (chiropractor) with clinical experience in managing adolescents with spinal pain and musculoskeletal conditions. He is an early career researcher, completing his PhD at the University of Sydney in 2019 in the area of pain and injury in adolescents and young adults. His doctoral studies included analyses of large international datasets estimating the prevalence and impacts of back pain in adolescents, and feasibility testing of mobile text messages (SMS) in the clinical follow-up of adolescents with MSK pain.