2016 Recipient of a Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Open Social Science: Emerging Researchers Category

Elaine is a Health Research Board Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement (ICE) post-doctoral research fellow based in the Health Behavior Change Research Group at the National University of Ireland Galway. She is currently involved in the development of a complex intervention to promote healthy infant feeding practices to improve childhood obesity outcomes. In particular, her role involves coordinating the implementation of the intervention and ensuring transparency within this process. Previously, her PhD in University College Dublin focused on using mixed methods to explore implementation fidelity within behavior change interventions. Her research interests include implementation science, improving the reporting and conduct of behavior change interventions, use of mixed methods, and narrowing the gap between research and practice, in areas of public health, behavioral and social sciences.

Dr. Toomey’s work in public health and behavior change focuses on a less visible, but crucially important, aspect of policy-making: intervention fidelity. She leads intervention transparency assurance efforts with the Health Behaviour Change Research Group (HBCRG) at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG). Dr. Toomey is also currently working on the development and reporting of process evaluations in behavioral interventions.

2016 Annual Meeting Leamer-Rosenthal Prize Winner Interview

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