Rate My Professor Kim Cousins

Dr Kimberly Cousins is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Public Health at the Dunedin campus of the University of Otago and a Research Fellow at the Va'a o Tautai Centre for Pacific Health within the Division of Health Sciences. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology, a Master of Public Health in 2006, a Diploma in Public Health, and a PhD in 2013, all from the University of Otago. Her doctoral research evaluated the Campus Watch intervention, a community-based initiative designed to reduce alcohol-related harm and social disorder in university communities. Cousins teaches undergraduate and postgraduate papers in health policy, health systems, and health promotion, serving as convenor for PUBH713 Society, Health and Health Promotion on the Dunedin campus and PUBH203 Health Policy and Politics: Global and Local.

Her research interests include alcohol-related harm among young people, evaluation of community interventions, access to medicines and health services, and the effects of poverty alleviation on mental health. Key publications feature "Alcohol outlet density, levels of drinking and alcohol-related harm in New Zealand: a national study" (Connor et al., 2011), "Risky drinking, risky sex: a national study of New Zealand university students" (Connor et al., 2013), "Sexual health, risks, and experiences of New Zealand university students: findings from a national cross-sectional study" (Psutka et al., 2012), "Situational and contextual factors that increase the risk of harm when students drink" (Connor et al., 2014), "The association of smoking with drinking pattern may provide opportunities to reduce smoking among students" (Marsh et al., 2016), "Hazardous drinking among students over a decade of university policy change: controlled before-and-after evaluation" (Kypri et al., 2018), and "Impact of removing prescription co-payments on the use of costly health services: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial" (Norris et al., 2023). As part of the Va'a o Tautai research team, she contributes to the FreeMeds randomised controlled trial, funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand, examining the impact of removing prescription charges on health outcomes for low-income individuals with high health needs.