CBRC staff profiles

Key staff at our Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer (CBRC) are profiled below. To contact email cbrc@cancervic.org.au.

Melanie Wakefield, BA, Dip Appl Psych, MA(Applied Psych), PhD

Director, CBRC
Melanie is a behavioural scientist with qualifications from the University of Adelaide in South Australia. She has conducted research on health behaviour since 1983, working in Australia, England and the United States. Her particular research interests involve understanding media influences on smoking and determining the effects of smoke-free policies on smokers and non-smokers.

Melanie Wakefield profile.

Victoria White, PhD

Deputy Director, CBRC
Vicki is a behavioural scientist with a Master's degree and PhD in Psychology and has been working on research related to health behaviour for over a decade. Her main areas of research interests include: understanding factors contributing to adolescents' and young adults' use of tobacco, changes in prevalence of tobacco use over time, understanding factors influencing the decision to have a mammogram, and the identifying factors that influence cancer patients' adjustment to their cancer and its treatment.

Suzanne Dobbinson, PhD

Senior Research Fellow
Suzanne has a Master of Science degree and a PhD in Public Health and has been working in public health research for more than a decade. She completed her PhD with the School of Community Health at the University of New South Wales in 2000. She works closely with the staff of SunSmart, the skin cancer control program of The Cancer Council Victoria. Her research informs the development of the program through a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, formative, impact and outcome research. Her research interests relate to exploring the patterns and causes of sun protective and sun exposing behaviours, and include assessing the impact of strategies to improve environmental supports for sun protection.

Helen Dixon, PhD

Senior Research Fellow

Helen is a Senior Research Fellow who has been working on research and evaluation in cancer prevention for over a decade. Her main areas of research interest are psychosocial determinants of health-related behaviour, and mass media research on public responses to health-related communications. Helen has a PhD in psychology from The University of Melbourne. For her PhD thesis, she investigated audience responses to the portrayal of tobacco use in popular movies. Helen's current projects are primarily in the fields of skin cancer prevention and obesity prevention, and involve assessing public reactions to health promotion programs and to health-related content in news and entertainment media.

Sarah Durkin, PhD

Senior Research Fellow
Sarah has a PhD in Psychology from The University of Melbourne, and has been working in health psychology and health promotion research for ten years. Sarah's PhD thesis examined the media's impact on body image and disordered eating. In the past four years Sarah's research has focused on examining the impact of mass media messages on health-related attitudes and behaviour change, especially as it applies to smoking. She works closely with the staff of Quit Victoria and her research examines and informs their advertising and policy programs. Her current research work is focused on examining the impact of anti-smoking advertising and news media on smoking attitudes and behaviors.

Geoff Smith, PhD

ASSAD Research Manager
Geoff is a psychologist with a Masters degree and PhD from the Victoria University of Manchester. Geoff has experience working in various research areas such as sports psychology, cognitive gerontology, road safety, heart disease, and organ and tissue donation for transplantation. Geoff hopes to maintain the high standard of research and publications achieved by CBRC in previous ASSAD project surveys.

Robyn Mullins, MEd

PapScreen Research and Evaluation Manager
Robyn is a behavioural scientist with a Master's degree in Education, and has been working in research and evaluation to do with health behaviour for more than a decade. Her main areas of interest are producing interventions and appropriate campaign messages to encourage under-screened women to present for regular, timely Pap screens and to discourage over-screened women from presenting too frequently, while maintaining the behaviour of those being screened appropriately.

Claire Davey, BAppSc

DCIS Study Manager
Claire has worked in the public health field for nearly two decades, principally on projects concerned with cervical cancer screening and breast cancer screening. Claire is currently coordinating a three-year study looking at the management of Ductal Carcinoma in Situ (DCIS). This Victorian study has three components: surveying breast cancer clinicians to determine their attitudes towards treatment recommendations for DCIS; surveying management practices of surgeons concerning new DCIS diagnoses in 2002/03 and 2006/07; surveying women diagnosed and treated for DCIS to determine their knowledge, information sources and participation in treatment decisions.

Jen Makin, MSc

SunSmart Research and Evaluation Manager
Jen is a social researcher with an honours degree in psychology and a research masters in social policy, and has experience in research, monitoring and evaluation in health, education, gender and development. Her research interests include interrelationships between environment and behaviour, research in different cultural contexts, and research methods with children and young people. Her role at CBRC is to inform the development of the SunSmart program through a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, formative, impact and outcome research.

Belinda Morley, PhD

Obesity Prevention Research and Evaluation Manager
Belinda has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Melbourne and has previously worked in the Program Evaluation Unit at the University of Melbourne's School of Population Health where she was a Research Fellow, evaluating state and commonwealth mental health programs as well as physical activity in primary care. Her main areas of interest are health psychology, program evaluation and health promotion. Her current research work involves behavioural research projects and program evaluation specific to obesity prevention.

Molly McCarthy, BA(Hons)

Quit Research and Evaluation Manager
Molly graduated with a BA Hons (Psychology) from the University of Queensland and has managed research projects in areas including out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, drug and alcohol abuse, psychosocial interventions for women with breast cancer, and democratic engagement. Molly manages a program of research and evaluation to support the work of Quit Victoria, which includes monitoring smoking prevalence and examining the impact of policy and legislative changes. She is particularly interested in the determinants of behaviour change.