Rate My Professor Christine Rodda

Associate Professor Christine Rodda, a paediatric endocrinologist, holds a part-time position in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne's Western Clinical School within the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. She is a medical graduate and postgraduate of the University of Melbourne, with nearly 40 years of clinical experience in paediatric endocrinology at Sunshine Hospital, from which she retired clinically in 2021. Rodda serves as the Program Director for the Musculoskeletal Research in Children and Adolescents program at the Australian Institute for Musculoskeletal Science (AIMSS). She acts as the medical student research co-ordinator, developed a new postgraduate paediatric course for third-year MD students at Sunshine Hospital, and established a multidisciplinary Young Adults Diabetes Clinic as well as a Paediatric and Adolescent Endocrinology Clinic there.

Her research specializations encompass musculoskeletal development during childhood and adolescence in both health and disease, the effects of vitamin D deficiency on musculoskeletal development, genetic abnormalities of vitamin D metabolism, and embryonic musculoskeletal development and imprinting. Rodda's contributions include pioneering research on parathyroid hormone-related protein in malignancy and fetal development, with key publications such as "A parathyroid hormone-related protein implicated in malignant hypercalcemia: cloning and expression" (Science, 1987), "Parathyroid hormone-related protein purified from a human lung cancer cell line" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1987), and "Evidence for a novel parathyroid hormone-related protein in fetal lamb parathyroid glands and sheep placenta" (Journal of Endocrinology, 1988). She has also authored influential consensus guidelines, including "Prevention and treatment of infant and childhood vitamin D deficiency in Australia and New Zealand: a consensus statement" (Medical Journal of Australia, 2006), "Vitamin D and health in pregnancy, infants, children and adolescents in Australia and New Zealand: a position statement" (Medical Journal of Australia, 2013), and "Consensus guidelines on the use of bisphosphonate therapy in children and adolescents" (Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 2018). In 2023, she received honorary life membership from the Australian and New Zealand Society of Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes.