Dr. Laura Hart is a post-doctoral research fellow working in the Population Mental Health Group at the University of Melbourne. Dr. Hart has began working in the field with Professor Tony Jorm as a Research Assistant developing guidelines on mental health first aid to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait people.
She completed her doctoral thesis in Mental Health First Aid for Eating Disorders. After her PhD, she began researching and developing the "teen Mental Health First Aid" course, a new training program for adolescents aged 16-18, about how to help their friends. This evidence-based school training was designed with and for young people with mental health problems and their friends. Dr. Hart was awarded a beyondblue Early Career Researcher grant to evaluate the program in 2013 and an Australian Rotary Health Project Grant to conduct a randomised controlled trial from 2014-2016 in four Victorian Secondary Schools. She has been working closely with Mental Health First Aid Australia to launch the teen MHFA program nationally in 2014. Dr. Hart has also been involved in the national evaluation of the first edition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health First Aid program and its update to the second edition in 2012.Since 2012, Dr. Hart has also been completing a three-year postdoctoral research position at La Trobe University working on a program for parents of preschoolers to prevent body dissatisfaction, overweight and disordered eating developing childhood. The "Confident Body, Confident Child" program is being evaluated using a four-arm randomised controlled trial with 350 Victorian parents of children aged 2-6 years.The winner of multiple awards for outstanding research presentations, she is an experienced public speaker, regular presenter national and international scientific conferences, and often invited to facilitate workshops and planning days for NGOs. Dr. Hart's research interests continue to include community-based mental health literacy programs to increase early intervention and prevention of mental illness. Her work also involves youth mental health, research translation, eating disorders and body image, parenting and suicide prevention.
Find out more about Laura Hart's experience
Laura Hart's highlights
FEATURED Journal article
#Ihaveembraced: a pilot cross-sectional naturalistic evaluation of the documentary film Embrace and its potential associations with body image in adult women.
Read moreLaura Hart's selected work
Projects
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Project Types
3
Research Grant
Scholarly Works
Displaying the 46 most recent scholarly works by Laura Hart.
News
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Honours, Awards and Fellowships
Young Investigator Scholarship for Travel to 2009 International Conference on Eating Disorders
Best Debut Presentaion
Peter Beumont Young Investigator Award
Credentials
Positions
Research Fellow In Population Mental Health
Melbourne School Of Population And Global Health
Member
Alliance for Prevention of Mental Disorders
Member
Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research
Member
Academy for Eating Disorders (AED)
Member
Australia and New Zealand Academy for Eating Disorders (ANZAED)
Education
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
University of Melbourne
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (Hons)
University of Melbourne
BACHELOR OF ARTS
University of Melbourne