Rate My Professor Rebecca Hodder

Associate Professor Rebecca Hodder holds the position of NHMRC Early Career Fellow in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle and serves as Program Manager at Hunter New England Population Health. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Behavioural Sciences, Master of Applied Psychology, and Bachelor of Arts (Psychology) from the University of Newcastle. With over 18 years of experience, she focuses on the implementation and evaluation of large-scale health promotion programs addressing risk factors for non-communicable chronic diseases, with a particular emphasis on school settings. Her research interests include systematic reviews, living evidence generation, school-based resilience interventions to reduce adolescent tobacco, alcohol, and illicit substance use, interventions to increase fruit and vegetable consumption in young children, chronic disease prevention in schools, implementation science, mental health, drug and alcohol prevention, obesity prevention, school-based health promotion, and evidence synthesis.

Dr Hodder has authored over 150 publications, including 116 peer-reviewed manuscripts with 27% as first or senior author, accumulating more than 6,088 citations and an h-index of 37. Key publications comprise leading Cochrane systematic reviews such as 'Interventions for increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in children aged five years and under' (2024), 'Living Systematic Reviews and Living Guidelines to Maintain the Currency of Public Health Guidelines' (American Journal of Public Health, 2024), 'Interventions to prevent obesity in school-aged children 6-18 years: An update of a Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis' (eClinicalMedicine, 2022), and 'Strategies for enhancing the implementation of school-based policies or practices targeting diet, physical activity, obesity, tobacco or alcohol use' (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2022). She has secured over $8 million in competitive funding and received awards including ranking in Stanford University's World's Top 2% of Scientists (2021-2024), 2019 CAPHIA Award for PhD Excellence in Public Health, Early Career Research and Innovation Excellence Award (School of Medicine and Public Health, 2019), and multiple team awards for Good for Kids. Good for Life. She serves as Methods Editor and Research Associate for Cochrane Public Health, Deputy Director of the Hunter Medical Research Institute Population Health Program, executive member of the Australasian Society of Behavioural Health and Medicine, and Stream Lead for chronic disease prevention programs at the National Centre of Implementation Science.