CART-GRAC Visiting Scholars
Dr. Anisa Assifi, (May 2024)
Dr Anisa Assifi is a Research Fellow with SPHERE, the NHMRC funded Centre of Research Excellence in Sexual and Reproductive Health for Women in Primary Care, in the Department of General Practice, at Monash University. She is an early-career public health researcher with an interest in sexual and reproductive health, particularly in abortion, adolescent health and more recently in community pharmacy. Anisa has worked in abortion research for 10 years at the World Health Organization based in Geneva, in safe abortion care, and University of Technology Sydney where she was awarded her PhD in 2021. Her research is currently focused on adolescents and the delivery of sexual and reproductive healthcare in the community pharmacy setting. Anisa is currently Project Manager of the ALLIANCE Trial, a pragmatic cluster randomised trial looking at expanding community pharmacists’ scope of practice to deliver person-centred effectiveness-based contraceptive counselling services.
Dr. Rebecca French, (February 2024)
Dr. Rebecca French is a Public Health researcher with experience of policy-related research, intervention development and evaluation. She has worked in the area of Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Research for 30 years.
In 2020,she was awarded NIHR funding to co-lead (with Prof Kaye Wellings) a major research project, the SACHA (Shaping Abortion for Change) study, aimed at providing the necessary evidence to reconfigure health services against a backcloth of recent regulatory and therapeutic trends in abortion provision and care. The collaborative international team amassed to carry out this complex study has the potential to endure beyond the time period of the research, and will serve as a pivotal point for future studies into abortion. Also in 2020, she was commissioned by Public Health England to lead a team charged with designing and piloting a Reproductive Health Tracking Survey, aimed at providing a standard research instrument to be used for national tracking as well as by community level agencies. A repetition of the survey has been commissioned by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) for 2023. Data from both these surveys will be used to inform the Department of Health and Social Care’s 2022 Women’s Health Strategy.
Other current or recent studies have focused on ethics and contraceptive use, fertility awareness, young people’s contraceptive use and digital methods of providing sexual health advice. Dr. French is a member of the fourth National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-4) Reproductive Health Working Group and have led on papers on contraceptive prevalence and sources of supply for Natsal-2 and 3.
In 2021, Dr. French was awarded an Honorary Fellowship with the Faculty of Sexual & Reproductive Health (FSRH). She was Chair of the FSRH Research Group between 2017-22 and continue to be a member of the group. She also has an honorary contract with OHID.
Dr. John Reynolds-Wright, (February 2024)
John Reynolds-Wright is a NES/CSO Clinical Lecturer in Sexual and Reproductive Health. He is based in the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health in the Institute of Regeneration and Repair. He conducts clinical research projects in abortion care, post-abortion contraception, pharmacy-delviered sexual and reproductive healthcare, and male contraception.
Dr. Martha Paynter, (March 2022)
Dr. Martha Paynter is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of New Brunswick, where her clinical teaching and research focus on the intersection of reproductive health and the criminal justice system. She is the Affiliate Scientist for the Nova Scotia Women’s Choice Clinic, and the founder and past chair of Wellness Within: An Organization for Health and Justice, the only organization in Canada dedicated to advancing reproductive justice for people experiencing criminalization. She is the author of Abortion to Abolition: Reproductive Health and Justice in Canada, which was published in Spring 2022 by Fernwood Publishing.
Professor Meredith Temple-Smith, (2016)
Prof Temple-Smith (BSc, Dip App Child Psych, MPH, DHSc) is Director of Research Training in the Department of General Practice at the University of Melbourne where her role focuses on increasing the research capacity of primary care clinicians. A mixed methods researcher, who has been CI on grants worth over $10 million, her interests centre on sexual and reproductive health and health services research.
She is co-founder of Miscarriage Australia, an evidence-based website providing psychosocial support for those who have experienced miscarriage. She is highly regarded for her knowledge on both theoretical and practical methods for the uptake of complex interventions in primary care. She has written or co-written over 150 peer-reviewed publications and two books, and edited three books, used as texts. She is a past Co-Chair of the Australasian Sexual Health Alliance, a sexual health advocacy alliance representing 13 multidisciplinary organisations, Past President of the Australasian Society for Psychosocial Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and current president of the Medical History Society of Victoria. She assisted in the establishment of VicReN, the Victorian general practice based research network. She is involved in teaching primary care research skills to primary care practitioners, and has oversight of all research students in the Department.
Dr. Danielle Mazza, (2015)
Professor Danielle Mazza AM FAHMS, MD, MBBS, FRACGP, DRANZCOG, Grad Dip Women’s Health, GAICD, CF is an internationally distinguished general practice clinician researcher and Head of the Department of General Practice at Monash University. Her research and leadership have been highly influential in reducing inequities in access and improving the quality of clinical care delivered in general practice in women’s sexual and reproductive health, preventive care, the early detection of cancer and antimicrobial stewardship.
A strong proponent of evidence-based care, she has led and contributed to the development and implementation of key general practice guidelines used nationwide and provides expert advice to professional, government and policy groups nationally and around the world. She leads the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health in Primary Care (SPHERE) and Chairs the Royal Australian College of General Practice’s Preventive Care Guideline (the RACGP’s key guideline used by > 35,000 GPs) Development Group.
Professor Mazza is a ministerial appointment to the Victorian Women’s Health Advisory Council and the National Women’s Health Advisory Council, chairing the former’s Access to LARC and Termination Subcommittee and co-chairing the latter’s Access, Care and Outcomes Subcommittee. She is also a member of the Therapeutic Goods Administration Women’s Health Products Working Group and the National Endometriosis Advisory Group. Over the course of her career she has acquired more than $48 million in competitive funding ($36 million of which has been Category One funding, >$25 million as CIA), including 4 NHMRC project grants, 4 MRFF grants, 4 partnership projects, 1 Dementia Research Team Grant, and 4 CREs ( two of which she has led). She has published 258 peer-reviewed publications (73 as first-author), 128 of which were published in the last 5 years (H index: 29 Scival; 38 google scholar, Citations: 3094 Scopus and 6035 Google Scholar) and ranks in the top 0.7% of researchers worldwide in the field of contraception (expertscape).
Professor Mazza was awarded a Member of The Order of Australia (AM) in 2023 for her significant service to medicine and medical research, particularly women’s health and in the same year she was awarded a Fellowship by the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in recognition of her important contributions to health and medical research.
