How do you explain your current research/job to friends and family?
I tell people that I work with hospitals to help patients feel more motivated and supported to make positive changes in their lives. My research looks at how we can make it easier for people to be active, eat well, and stay connected — and how hospitals can make that kind of support part of everyday care.
How would you describe your program of research and its significance?
My research focuses on behaviour change and preventive health within hospital and health service settings. I’m particularly interested in how motivation and social connection influence physical activity and wellbeing, and how those approaches can be embedded into routine care. Much of my work sits at the intersection of implementation science and service design — translating evidence-based interventions into practical models that hospitals can actually deliver. The goal is to make prevention part of standard care, not something that happens only after people leave the hospital.
What is a paper you recently published? What excited you about the question you answered?
Our team recently published a study in BMC Public Health evaluating the Healthy4U at Scale project — which expanded an evidence-based physical activity behaviour change program from one regional hospital to five rural hospitals across Victoria. We wanted to know if interventions that work in trials can also work in real-world hospital settings. The most exciting part was seeing that participants still improved their activity and wellbeing, even when delivered under real service pressures. It showed that scaling up preventive health in rural hospitals isn’t just possible — it’s practical.
Dunford, A. R., Begg, S., Kingsley, M., O’Halloran, P., Perrin, B. M., & Barrett, S. (2025). Feasibility of scaling-up an evidence-based physical activity behaviour change intervention into routine ambulatory hospital care: a retrospective implementation evaluation using the RE-AIM framework. BMC Public Health, 25(1), 2396.
What is a project you’re working on right now that you’re excited about?
We’ve just started a hybrid implementation–effectiveness trial that builds directly on the Healthy4U at Scale project. We’re again working with the same rural health services, but this time engaging a broader group of clinicians — particularly Allied Health Professionals — to refer patients into preventive health programs. This builds on our earlier research showing that AHPs are willing to promote prevention if clear referral pathways exist. We’ve now translated that insight into practice, testing how these pathways can be embedded within routine care and evaluating both implementation success and patient outcomes.
What is a challenge have you faced as an early career researcher? (And how did you overcome it?)
One of the biggest challenges has been balancing the demands of implementation research with the realities of working in busy health services. As an early career researcher embedded within a hospital, it’s easy to get pulled between clinical priorities and research goals. I’ve learned to navigate this by building strong relationships with clinicians and managers early on, framing research as a tool that helps solve their problems rather than adding to their workload. That shift in perspective — from researcher to collaborator — has made the work far more feasible and rewarding.
What skills do you think have been most instrumental in your work? (How did you harness those skillsets?)
Communication and collaboration have been central. Much of my research success has come from listening to clinicians, translating complex theory into practical solutions, and co-designing projects that make sense in their context. Implementation science gives you the frameworks, but it’s the ability to communicate across disciplines — from executives to frontline staff — that makes those frameworks come alive. I’ve developed those skills through practice: running workshops, facilitating teams, and learning to adapt my language depending on who’s in the room.
About Stephen Barrett
Stephen is an Early Career Researcher and the Allied Health Research and Knowledge Translation Lead at Bendigo Health. His research focuses on health behaviour change and preventive health, with a particular emphasis on increasing physical activity and understanding the health economics of lifestyle interventions. He has a strong interest in implementation science and knowledge translation, using theories, models, and frameworks to accelerate the uptake of evidence into clinical practice. Stephen’s work aims to bridge the gap between research and real-world health service delivery, particularly within regional and rural settings.
Check out more of Dr. Barrett’s research here.
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