Rae Thomas

I am an Associate Professor in the Centre for Research in Evidence-Based Practice at Bond University, and a Psychologist with over 20 years' experience providing psychological interventions for children and families.

I am particularly interested in developing, implementing and evaluating randomised controlled trials,  exploring processes and embedding public preferences in health decision making, and translating evidence to practice and policy.

I am involved in researching a style of deliberative democracy known as community juries and have led research projects to explore their utility in public health policy development.

I have taught evidence-based practice to students and health practitioners, conducted systematic reviews, used randomised controlled experimental designs, and explored innovative methodologies to facilitate public deliberation in health policy decision making.

My research themes include:

• Improving evidence-based decision making in clinical practice.
• Using community engagement in health policy decision-making.
• Working with the public to better facilitate and understand the evidence-based practice.

My research within the Centre for Research in Evidence-Based Practice is focussed on improving the uptake of research to better inform evidence-based practice in public, clinical, and policy domains.

Research in this area would explore how to improve critical appraisal skills in community members, how to disseminate research knowledge to clinicians so they might use it more frequently, and how to work with policy-makers to explore community engagement techniques.