Rate My Professor Jo Hilder

Jo Hilder is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice at the University of Otago, Wellington, within the Faculty of Medicine. Holding a Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, she brings expertise in interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, and applied linguistics to her research on communication in health care. As a senior researcher and data manager in the Applied Research on Communication in Health (ARCH) Group, Hilder analyzes video-recorded interactions in primary care settings to improve health professional-patient communication. Her work addresses critical areas such as the role of interpreters for patients with limited English proficiency, discussions of sensitive topics including overweight and obesity, chronic pain, prediabetes, high-risk antenatal consultations, youth mental health support, and community perspectives on vaccination and respiratory virus management during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Pasifika communities.

Hilder's key publications include the influential "How to use interpreters in general practice: the development of a New Zealand toolkit" (2012, with Ben Gray and Maria Stubbe), cited over 80 times, and "Are research ethics guidelines culturally competent?" (2017, cited over 40 times). Other notable works are "'It depends on the consultation': revisiting use of family members as interpreters for general practice consultations – when and why?" (2017), "Communication in high risk ante-natal consultations: a direct observational study" (2020), "Young People Talk About Digital Support for Mental Health: An Online Survey of 15–30-Year Olds in New Zealand" (2024), and "Conversations, connections and community: Seven case studies of innovative vaccine delivery for Māori and Pasifika during the COVID-19 pandemic" (2025). She co-developed an eLearning module on working with language interpreters, endorsed by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners in 2016. With 37 publications and over 500 citations, her research significantly influences culturally responsive practices in New Zealand primary health care.