Background

Ana is a Research Assistant within the Disease Elimination Program. Her key responsibilities include: 

• Focusing on the health and wellbeing of young people, particularly in terms of sexual health. She coordinates the annual survey Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll.
• Working with and for multicultural communities. 
• Advocating for menstrual health needs in Australia. 

Ana completed her Honours degree in 2021. For this, she explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people's anxiety and depression symptoms using longitudinal data from the Coping with COVID study.  

Ana has experience with qualitative and quantitative methods. She applies statistical analysis and data preparation as part of her quantitative research. Ana also implements participatory approaches, such as co-design methods, in her work.

Her main projects have been co-designing 2 pilot programs:  

• The Gist, focused on sex and relationships education
• VOICE, focused on improving engagement with multicultural communities.

Qualifications

• 2021: Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours), Monash University, Australia.
• 2020: Bachelor of Science. Major in Pure Mathematics. 
• 2020: Bachelor of Arts. Extended major in Psychology, Monash University, Australia.

Positions

• 2022–current: Research Assistant, Burnet Institute
• 2022–current: Teaching Associate, Monash University