Dr Denise Azar is an early career researcher employed as a Research Fellow in the School of Rural Health at Monash University. She completed a PhD at Deakin University in 2011 with her thesis exploring the relationship between physical activity and depressive symptoms among young women. Denise previously worked on a NHMRC-funded project at Cancer Council Victoria, where she managed a national project examining the association between alcohol outlet density, alcohol policies, advertising and newspaper reporting on adolescent’s alcohol use (using self-report data from the Australian Secondary Students Alcohol and Drug (ASSAD) survey).

Denise’s current projects focus on understanding the role of health literacy in reducing health inequalities, and co-design and application of health literacy interventions with health services, consumers and practitioners.

Denise’s research interests include;

• Health literacy and socio-demographic factors that influence accessibility and acceptability of hospital-based cardiac services.
• Social determinants of health experienced by individuals living in rural areas to improve health outcomes
• Reducing health inequalities for people living in rural areas