With more than 20 years of experience working as a public health and health services researcher, Melanie has accrued specialist knowledge in health literacy development, co-design intervention development, health service improvement, health program evaluation, questionnaire design, and validity theory and methodology for questionnaire development and testing.

Collaborating with and training national and international health industry and research partners, Melanie’s approach to intervention development, implementation and evaluation uses co-design methods and health literacy thinking. She has played a major role in the conceptualisation, theory development, evaluation, training and implementation of tools and processes that are now used in more than 80 countries. These tools and processes include the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ), the eHealth Literacy Questionnaire (eHLQ), the Conversational Health Literacy Tool (CHAT), and the Optimising Health Literacy and Access (Ophelia) process. She is an author on the Ophelia Manual (2022).

The Ophelia process is an internationally used and World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed co-design methodology for intervention development and implementation and is now applied in more than 30 countries. Under contract (2023-2027) to Santé publique France (French national health agency) on Work Package 6 – Health Literacy and Awareness for the European Joint Action on Cardiovascular Diseases and Diabetes (JACARDI), Melanie is an active member of the WP6 leadership team. She co-leads training and guidance on intervention co-design using the Ophelia methodology to 23 project teams from 12 European countries and, using realist evaluation and program logic principles, led the design and implementation of the WP6 evaluation across the projects. She receives regular invitations to deliver training, including from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health and Training at Imperial College London in England. As well as leading Ophelia projects in Australia, she has co-led Ophelia masterclasses in Australia, Spain, Brunei Darussalam, Poland and Switzerland. Melanie is an Associate Editor (2024-2027) for Quality of Life Research journal (Q1) and is a regular reviewer of manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals. She supervises two PhD students.

At the core of Melanie’s approach to research is a recognition that context matters. The meaning and impact of data interpretation emerge through lived experience, cultural knowledge, and genuine community engagement. Her work is grounded in evidence, equity, and the value of local knowledge, aiming to create meaningful, sustainable health solutions through collaboration and co-design.