Staff Profile

Amanda Wilson has strong research background having worked in both clinical and public health research for many years. She has worked in a variety of health care environments including general practice, the community and tertiary teaching hospitals. While completing a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in English, Amanda began working part-time in clinical trials on asthma. This led to full-time employment in clinical respiratory research, involving asthma, COPD and sleep disorders. Her position involved trial design, implementation, data collection, analysis, writing and presentation of results.

Amanda was a reviewer with the Cochrane Airways Group and developed and co-authored the first comprehensive report on evidence-based asthma management (Australian Asthma Management Plan 2000). She published a number of well cited papers in international and Australian peer-review journals, presented at international conferences, produced several industry reports and co-authored of a chapter in "Understanding Asthma: A Management Companion" edited by Dr Christine Jenkins.

In 2000, Amanda joined the Newcastle Institute of Public Health (NIPH) as a Research Officer with a research focus on health services research. She produced several papers and reports including the NHMRC “Using Socioeconomic Evidence in Clinical Practice Guidelines Handbook” and the Clinical Service Framework for Respiratory Disease for NSW Department of Health. As part of her role, she tutored Medical Students at the University of Newcastle.

While at NIPH, Amanda co-founded the Media Doctor website (mediadoctor.org.au) with Professor David Henry and has worked on the site as a reviewer and data manager since its inception in 2002. In 2005, Amanda and Professor David Henry were awarded the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for ‘Critical Thinking’ for their work on Media Doctor.

During this period (2001 - 2005) Amanda also completed a Master of Creative Arts in writing.

She was awarded a full Postgraduate Research Scholarship and began a PhD in the Discipline of Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Health. Using data from the Media Doctor website, Amanda examined how the media deals with various aspects of health and the impact of the website on the quality of this reporting. Her thesis is one of only a handful worldwide in the area of health reporting and, probably the only one which uses an evidence-based appraisal of the quality of content. In 2010, her thesis “Assessing the Quality of Health News Stories in the Australian Media Using the Media Doctor Website” was examined with no changes required and PhD awarded. Five papers have been published based on her PhD work, all in high quality peer-review journals, including PLoS Medicine, PLoS One and Medical Journal of Australia.

Amanda is currently working with A/Prof Kyp Kypri, as a Research Academic using her research and web skills to perform online studies examining methodology and social desirability bias in the area of alcohol. She also continues her work in the area of health literacy and media content with the Media Doctor website.