Rate My Professor Megan Freund

Dr Megan Freund is a Research Academic and Research Fellow in the School of Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Health and Medicine, at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy in 2008, Bachelor of Science, and Graduate Diploma in Health Promotion at the University of Newcastle. As a mid-career researcher with over 20 years in health behaviour research, she held HMRI and Newcastle Institute of Public Health Post-Doctoral Research Fellowships from 2007 to 2013, working with the Hunter New England Health District's Population Health Unit. She commenced with the Health Behaviour Research Collaborative in 2016, held an NHMRC Translation Research into Practice Fellowship from 2018 to 2019, and currently serves as Program Lead for the HMRI Equity in Health and Wellbeing Research Program. In 2023, she received the Hunter Children’s Research Foundation CARE Award.

Dr Freund's research focuses on translational research to promote the adoption of efficacious health behaviour interventions into routine practice by service delivery organisations. Her interests include the effectiveness of systems-based interventions to increase health assessments for Aboriginal people attending Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services, improving timely diagnosis and best care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living with dementia, examining client, treatment, and system factors impacting alcohol misuse outcomes, understanding adolescent gambling prevalence and burden, and assessing health needs of people in social housing and older residents of manufactured home villages. She has attracted over $10 million in competitive grants, leading a $3 million NHMRC project on dementia for Aboriginal communities and serving as Chief Investigator on an Asthma Australia-funded smart inhaler study for children. With more than 95 peer-reviewed publications, key works include 'Effectiveness of an Exploratory Pragmatic Universal School-Based Resilience Intervention in Improving Adolescent Physical Activity and Fruit and Vegetable Consumption' (Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 2026), 'Co-Occurring Mental Health and Substance Use Research Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People: A Systematic Review' (Journal of Dual Diagnosis, 2025), 'Psychometric properties, and cultural appropriateness, of patient reported outcome measures for use in primary healthcare: a scoping review' (Quality of Life Research, 2025), and 'Flash glucose monitoring for indigenous Australians with type 2 diabetes: a randomised pilot and feasibility study' (BMC Health Services Research, 2023).