Dr Natalie Walker
Programme Director, Addiction

Natalie graduated with a Masters degree in Science from Victoria University (Wellington), and a postgraduate diploma in Public Health from Otago University (Wellington). She worked for five years at ESR: Health (Wellington) in the field of environmental microbiology and infectious disease epidemiology. Natalie joined the Clinical Trials Research Unit as a Research Fellow in 1995, where she completed a PhD in cardiovascular epidemiology in 2000.
Natalie has been the recipient of a Health Research Council Training Fellowship and a National Heart Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, and is currently employed by the CTRU as a Senior Research Fellow. Natalie has been involved in the PEP trial and the CORTRA, Auckland leg ulcer and Steroid Follow-up studies. She is currently principal investigator for the SONIQ and RELIQ trials, and co-investigator on the PQNIQ and HALT trials.

Natalie undertakes supervision of Masters and PhD students, is an invited lecturer at the School of Nursing, Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, and has previously been involved in teaching undergraduate students as part of the University of Auckland Bachelor of Health Sciences degree. Natalie is a member of the International Society for Complementary Medicine Research (board member), the Interim Joint Expert Advisory Committee on Complementary Medicines (Medsafe), and the Australasian Epidemiology Association. Natalie is also a reviewer of grant applications for the Health Research Council of New Zealand and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, as well as a reviewer of publications for the British Medical Journal, the New Zealand Medical Journal, the International Journal of Epidemiology and the Journal of Human Hypertension.

Specialist research interests include cardiovascular epidemiology (particularly venous disease in the lower limb), smoking cessation research, the use of novel technology in disease prevention, and research into the efficacy and safety of complementary and alternative medicine.