Christina Aggar

Biography

Christina is a registered nurse and an expert on ageing, family carers and caregiving, and health services research. Christina holds a conjoint research academic appointment at Northern NSW Local Health District, leading the strategic development of patient care and health services research across 12 hospitals. Christina is a leading international researcher on building capacity and capability among family carers of older people with complex chronic disease, and social prescribing programs.

Research

Christina has a proven track record in supporting healthcare professionals to conduct and translate research into practice, resulting in high-quality accessible services that support better health outcomes. With a national and international research profile, she has authored over 80 peer-reviewed articles, government submissions, and reports. Christina has secured over $7 million in research funding, including $4.9 million in the last 5 years.

She has led collaborations with peak organizations, industry, consumers, academics, and clinicians to improve patient care by supporting workforce development. This work resulted in Southern Cross University's first interprofessional education clinical placement opportunity in international and rural remote facilities. Christina's research has also supported significant recommendations and frameworks, such as the Productivity Commission Inquiry "Caring for Older Australians" and the National Carer Recognition Framework.

Community engagement

Christina is involved in community engagement through various committees including Gold Coast University Hospital Research Grant, NNSW Local Health District Ethics Committee and NNSW Local Health District End of Life Committee. Christina has held external Board and Advisory memberships including the Qld & NNSW Regional Health Collaborative on which she was co-lead on the Healthy Communities Group 2019; NSW Mental Health Nursing Research Collaborative 2018; Clinical Excellence Commission (CEC): Citizens Engagement Advisor Panel (CEAC) 2012 – 2016; Carers NSW Board member 2008-2016; the Ministerial Carers Summit-NSW Carers' Strategy- NSW Health 2014-5. Christina is a guest reviewer for a number of journals, including Collegian, Nurse Education Today and Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine.

Supervision

Christina currently supports 4 PhD and 6 Masters students, 5 as primary supervisor. She encourages students, early career researchers and clinicians to publish early. In the last 2 years, Christina has successfully supported more than 40 new projects several attracting external funding.

Teaching

Christina has extensive teaching, and curriculum review and development experience in undergraduate and postgraduate programs including, the first Australian:

• Primary Health Care Transition program for new graduate nurses
• Community Health Care Transition program for new graduate nurses
• Masters Primary Health Care program
• Postgraduate program for internationally qualified nurses seeking Australian registration.

Other

Christina's work with international nurses and undergraduate programs continues to grow. The establishment of several key collaborations have resulted in sustainable and ongoing curricula research nexus, including a digital mobile program to support nurses' leadership skills in primary health care and chronic illness management at KLE Institute of Nursing, and 12 other universities across India.

Christina won a 2020 Australian Academy of Science Fellowship to further develop her international network with industry partners in India to improve clinicians' interprofessional healthcare leadership skills, using innovative technologies.