Dr Rosanne Freak-Poli is a life-course epidemiologist strongly driven by social justice, being the equitable distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. She brings expertise across the research continuum—from design to implementation and translation. Her current work focuses on strengthening real-world solutions, particularly social prescribing and social connection programs, through co-design, scaling, and evaluation. Rosanne’s mission is to apply rigorous epidemiological insights to inform policies and programs that enable longer, healthier, and more meaningful lives for all.

RESEARCH BACKGROUND

Rosanne is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and the School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health.

Healthy ageing and wellbeing: Rosanne’s Ph.D. (Epidemiology) evaluated the impact of a physical activity intervention in the workplace, which has been described in a Scientific Statement as one of only a few interventions that decrease or interrupt sedentary behaviour in the work environment to improve metabolic risk. Rosanne’s Ph.D. findings have informed a mandated, comprehensive Clinical Practice Guideline for the 70+ million obese Americans; an Evidence Check for the development and implementation of workplace programs, brokered by the NSW Ministry; and clinical guidelines (e.g. appropriate anthropometric indices for South Asians by World Health Organization to assess adiposity health risk among nearly 2 billion worldwide).

Happiness and health: Rosanne’s NHMRC Early Career Research Fellowship (2013-2018) provided an international residency in The Netherlands to gain access to The Rotterdam Study, a longitudinal database following 15,000 older adults. Rosanne’s finding that being “unhappy” does not necessarily contribute to cardiovascular disease reshaped the field, informing 9 books including by a prominent social epidemiologist and international tertiary psychology courses, as a warning of the complexities between psychological and physical health. Rosanne also debunked the assumption that depression after a cardiovascular disease event was considered a risk-factor for increased mortality. She demonstrated that the cardiovascular disease event was inflating already high levels of depressive symptoms that were present prior. Together, Rosanne’s findings have demonstrated the interaction between psychological and physical health – an important aspect for government resource allocation.

Sexual activity and physical tenderness: Rosanne expanded her NHMRC research program to assess as an element of thriving. Her findings that sexual activity is strongly linked to happiness and health in later life led to invitations to be guest editor for a special issue on sex and ageing in the Australasian Journal on Ageing (2020), including a written editorial and paper that was awarded the top-cited article 2020–2021. This research is still of international interest (e.g. invited presentation, Institute of Population Ageing, Oxford University 2024).

Loneliness and social isolation: Through a National Heart Foundation of Australia Postdoctoral Fellowship (2018-2022), Rosanne has made an internationally significant and impactful contribution to understanding the population impact of social health. She has progressed the field by examining the social health components of social isolation, social support, and loneliness separately. Rosanne has demonstrated that social health is associated with a greater severity of chronic disease risk-factors¹, lower quality of life^2,3, and widowhood; increased risk of cardiovascular disease^4,5 and dementia^6,7; and worse mental health during cardiovascular disease recovery⁸. This led to an invited chapter, “Social Isolation and Loneliness” (Cambridge Handbook on Loneliness, in press), describing how social isolation primarily affects lifestyle behaviours, while loneliness more directly influences biological mechanisms—both contributing to poorer health and wellbeing. Translation of findings includes Medical Journal of Australia InSight+ “Take socialising seriously for your patients’ survival” and “Loneliness after spousal loss: a universal experience”.

Social determinants: Identifying the systemic issues underlying social isolation and loneliness, Rosanne expanded her research to a broader range of social determinants. For the first time, she demonstrated that social determinants are among the top predictors of CVD, surpassing the well-established biological risk factors. These social determinants include social networks, living with others, indicators of socioeconomic advantage, recent stressful life events (men only), and first language (women only). This work is at the forefront of advancing gender-specific evidence and the application of AI deep learning in epidemiological research. Her work demonstrates that deep-learning AI models are superior to traditional machine-learning techniques (e.g., Cox survival models) for predicting CVD, the importance of gender-specific models, and the need to incorporate social determinants into CVD and Dementia risk models.

Social prescribing: Recognising the need for urgent solutions, Rosanne has focused on social prescribing. This has included advancing knowledge in mapping the Australian social prescribing landscape, establishing a reference for benchmarking, identifying key outcome domains, and highlighting gaps in measurement and methodology.

INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION

Rosanne is recognised internationally for her expertise in loneliness (#44 worldwide, #6 in Australia, #8 in the Netherlands, ) and nationally in social isolation (#6), Widowhood (#11), Optimism (#13), Social support (#14), Marital status (#16), Social Environment (#21), Happiness (#34), and Social conditions (#58). Her work has impacted 101 policy documents, spanning global perspectives (e.g., 10 WHO, 5 World Bank, 2 UN), international initiatives (e.g., governments of Malaysia, Sweden, France, Lebanon, Italy), and national efforts (e.g., 4 Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2 Australian government Department of Health).

Rosanne’s recent work has informed policy globally (e.g. Measuring social connectedness in OECD countries), internationally (e.g. USA Report to Congress 2024) and nationally (e.g. Australian Institute of Family Studies). Invited presentations include NSW Parliament public hearing (2024); Global Burden of Disease Webinar (2024); Keynote Measuring Social Prescribing Impact at the 1st Australian Social Prescribing Institute of Research and Education conference (2023); and training for professionals by the International Institute on Ageing, United Nations (2024) and Australian Psychological Society College of Clinical Psychologists (2024).

Rosanne has been the recipient of a number of awards including a BUPA Emerging Health Researcher Commendation Award, Doctoral Program Excellence Award, and a competitive World Health Organization Internship in Geneva, Switzerland. Rosanne's work has had immeasurable media attention, including live national interview (Studio10), national news (6pm 7NEWS, SBS News radio, 7am ABC Radio reaching 1,136,600 people, WSFM 101.7 Sydney iHeartRadio), and local outlets (ABC Radio Melbourne reaching 94,000 people). Additionally written media span different target groups, including Loneliness can be a health hazard; Social isolation linked to lower brain volume; Isolation and loneliness linked to mortality; Loneliness link to heart disease in older Australians; I don't think lonely could apply to me, I was wrong; The case that exercise cuts depression is stronger than ever; Mental Health During The Festive Season; and Encouraging older Australians to connect this festive season. 

LINKS

http://au.linkedin.com/pub/rosanne-freak-poli/19/b70/aa4

https://monash.academia.edu/RosanneFreakPoli

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rosanne_Freak-Poli

https://publons.com/author/959550/rosanne-freak-poli#profile

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=freak-poli%5Bauth%5D&sort=pubdate