Dr Sarah Hopkins is a Research Fellow in the Department of Psychological Medicine. Sarah has a clinical research background in exercise physiology and almost 10 years working in youth mental health research. Her research has explored the potential of lifestyle and behaviour change to improve health outcomes and in evaluating pragmatic interventions for health-related behaviour change during key transitional periods across the life course (e.g. adolescence & childbearing years).

Sarah’s research at the University of Auckland has been increasingly focused on developing and evaluating digital technologies to support the health and wellbeing of young people. She has recently led the development and implementation of an evaluation framework to support national rollout and user driven enhancement of Headstrong, an app designed at the University of Auckland to support youth mental wellbeing. She is also co-lead of closely related work to develop a chatbot for physical activity promotion in youth.

Find out more about Sarah