Inaugural FCMHW Early Career Research Fellow at Flinders University - Jasmine Petersen

The Centre is pleased to formally announce the appointment of Jasmine Petersen to the position of the inaugural Freemasons Centre for Male Health & Wellbeing Early Career Research Fellow at Flinders University. Jasmine has started her 2-year post-doctoral training and research position in the area of young males, sport and mental health, funded by the Centre through generous support of Masonic Charities and Flinders Foundation.

Jasmine recently completed her PhD in Psychology at Flinders University in the area of behaviour change and exercise.

Jasmine will be based at the Sport, Health, Physical Activity and Exercise (SHAPE) Research Centre in the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work and working closely with program leads Professor Murray Drummond and Associate Professor Ben Wadham.

Jasmine will be working directly with young males and their sporting clubs to establish how young males social and emotional development ies are created, maintained and perpetuated within their sporting clubs, and promote the importance of mental health and wellbeing as a key element of sporting club culture.

Jasmine and her research team aim to assist traditional sporting clubs partnering with the Program to become inviting and nurturing spaces for young males through traditional and contemporary education initiatives developed as an outcome of this program.

Jasmine will be working with a broad range of sporting codes that have signed up to be involved in the program. These include:

o   South Australian National Football League

o   South Australian Cricket Association

o   Indigenous Sport and Health Department, NT

o   The Australian Football League, NT

along with partners

o   Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing

o   Sports SA

o   Mental Health Commission, and the

o   Breakthrough Mental Health Foundation

o   NT Mental Health Coalition

o   Darwin Indigenous Men’s Service. 

Grants to promote wellbeing of young Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander males in NT

Congratulations to researchers based at the Freemasons Centre for Male Health and Wellbeing – Northern Territory, led by Professor James Smith, on recently being awarded two grants:

• A Menzies School of Health Internal Small Research Grant to commence work relating to the adaptation of an online mental health education and support intervention for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males. This is a collaborative project with the University of Michigan, the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, and other Australian universities. This research has been catalysed by the collaborations James formed with Professor Derek Griffith at Vanderbilt University and Professor Daphne Watkins at the University of Michigan during his Fulbright Senior Scholarship program (see overview here). Other investigators involved in this project are Himanshu Gupta (Inaugural FCMHW NT Research Fellow), Anthony Merlino (Research Assistant), and Jahdai Vigona (Indigenous Trainee), all of whom are based at the Menzies School of Health Research.

• An Australian Government Department of Health grant of $103,940 for the Confident and Health Aboriginal Males Program (CHAMP): The development and piloting of a strengths-based health promotion program for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Males in the Northern Territory”. The Investigators are Prof James Smith, Mr Anthony Merlino, Dr Himanshu Gupta, and Dr Daile Rung and the project will be undertaken in collaboration with the Darwin Indigenous Men's Service, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation, Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet, and Edith Cowan University.