Rate My Professor Ratika Kumar

Dr. Ratika Kumar serves as an Adjunct Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow in Public Health within the Faculty of Health at Southern Cross University. She completed her PhD at the University of Queensland in 2018 and has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Newcastle and Southern Cross University. As an early career researcher, her expertise spans quantitative and qualitative research methodologies applied to public health domains, including tobacco control, smoking cessation interventions, oral health, dentistry, and mental health. Kumar employs mixed methods, social media evaluation, co-design, and implementation science to address health challenges in priority populations such as pregnant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, individuals with mental illness, refugees, and Indigenous communities.

Currently, she leads the evaluation design for the social media component of the iSISTAQUIT study, a large-scale implementation project training health providers in culturally sensitive, evidence-based smoking cessation techniques to reduce smoking among pregnant Indigenous women. Her scholarly contributions include key publications such as 'Efficacy of virtual reality exposure therapy for the treatment of dental phobia in adults: A randomized controlled trial' (Gujjar et al., 2019, Journal of Anxiety Disorders), 'Exposure to tobacco, environmental tobacco smoke and nicotine in pregnancy: a pragmatic overview of reviews of maternal and child outcomes, effectiveness of interventions' (Gould et al., 2020, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health), 'Motivations and limitations associated with vaping among people with mental illness: A qualitative analysis of Reddit discussions' (Sharma et al., 2017, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health), 'The challenge of reducing smoking in people with serious mental illness' (Sharma et al., 2016, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine), 'Australian mental health care practitioners’ practices and attitudes for encouraging smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction in smokers with severe mental illness' (Sharma et al., 2018, International Journal of Mental Health Nursing), and 'Recognising the importance of chronic lung disease: a consensus statement from the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases' (Gould et al., 2023, Respiratory Research). These works underscore her impact in advancing tobacco harm reduction and oral health strategies.