My research aims to reduce alcohol and other drugs harms in Australia. I study policies, people’s environments, their social and family lives and individual differences that influence alcohol and drug use and people’s risk of experiencing harm. I also study what type of interventions and education programs reduce alcohol harms and how to improve them.
One of my major research areas at the moment is women’s risky alcohol use. We know that women juggle a lot between work and families and that this can make them stressed, which can impact on how much they drink. We are doing different types of research to understand what women are going through and try to support them better.
People talk about drinking being an individual choice, but research shows that policies have a big impact on how much people drink and whether drinking causes them problems. Some of my recent research has been looking at how the NT’s policies impact people’s drinking but also whether they get help for drinking, whether they get in trouble with the law and how the policies affect whole families. We do this by looking at statistics and by listening to stories from people across the NT.