Ms Linda Portsmouth

PhD Student, CBRCC

Lecturer, School of Public Health

BAppSc (Speech & Hearing) (Curtin) BA (Comm) (Murdoch) PGradDip Health Promotion (Curtin) MHthComm (Curtin)

Linda is a lecturer in the School of Public Health, Curtin University of Technology, and writes and teaches a range of undergraduate and postgraduate health communication and health promotion media units. Linda also coordinates the Master of Health Communication and supervises Masters student projects.

In 2006 and 2007, she will pass on some of the above responsibilities to her School of Public Health colleagues. This is so she can be based in the Social Marketing Research Unit, Curtin Business School, and work on her Healthway funded PhD project investigating the effect of TV advertising on children's taste perceptions and food choices. Senior investigators on this project are: Prof Rob Donovan (CBRCC and Social Marketing Research Unit, CBS), Assoc Prof Clare Roberts (School of Psychology) and Dr Owen Carter (CBRCC).

Before coming to health communication, Linda was a speech pathologist for 10 years. She worked with children with communication problems (due to developmental delay or disability) in urban and rural community-based programs in Australia, the UK, Romanian Orphanages and Africa. She then worked as a health promotion professional at the WA AIDS Council and Perth Division of General Practice. She keeps in touch with current health promotion initiatives via her ongoing work as a freelance health video maker.

Teaching and Research Interests

• Television advertising and video production for health promotion
• Social marketing and health communication via mass media
• Cross cultural communication
• Health communication with people without literacy and people in developing countries
• Communication with people with disability
• Developing communication skills in student and graduate health professionals
  

Memberships

• Australian Health Promotion Association
• International Union for Health Promotion and Education
• Public Health Association of Australia
• Kidsafe WA
  

Awards

• The Curtin University Teaching and Learning Award (Health Promotion Team) 2005
• The Curtin Ethics, Equity and Social Justice Award 2003 (for development of Health Science Communication 180 unit content: communication cross culturally, with people with disability and with Australian Aboriginal people)

Books and Chapters

1. Portsmouth, L. (2004) 'Communicating health to the community' in J. Higgs, A. Sefton, A. Street, L. McAllister & I. Hay (eds), Communicating in the Health and Social Sciences, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne.
2. Portsmouth, L. (2004) 'Working as a member of a community health team' in J. Higgs, A. Sefton, A. Street, L. McAllister, & I. Hay (eds), Communicating in the Health and Social Sciences, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne.
   

   
   

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