Rate My Professor Gina Arena

Dr. Gina Arena is a Senior Lecturer in the UWA Medical School within the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Western Australia. She currently serves as the Scholarly Activities Research Coordinator for the MD program and has taught at UWA for over 20 years across undergraduate and postgraduate levels in health and medical disciplines. Arena holds a BA (Hons), MA, and PhD from the University of Western Australia, where she has worked since 2002. In 2023, she became Program Manager at The Kids Research Institute Australia (Telethon Kids Institute). She received the NH&MRC Postgraduate Research Scholarship on 5 May 2000.

Arena's research advances education in health and medical programs, spanning pedagogy, curriculum development, e-learning, and epidemiological studies on topics including falls in older adults, oral health data linkage, smoking effects on surgical outcomes, nutrition adherence in pregnant and lactating women, eosinophilic oesophagitis treatment, and childhood obesity in medical curricula. Her projects include SENSitivity: Sensing Movement Trends in Early Childhood for Better Health Outcomes (2025–2029) as investigator and Personalised driving safety: Using telematics to reduce risky behaviour among young drivers (2021–2022). Key publications are Health system costs of falls of older adults in Western Australia (2004), Western Australian dental graduates’ perception of preparedness to practice: a five-year follow-up (2007), Addressing current problems in teaching pathology to medical students: blended learning (2008), Adapting to teaching during a pandemic: Pedagogical adjustments for the next semester of teaching during COVID-19 and future online learning (2021), A Scoping Review of Methodologies Exploring Diet and Health Outcomes in Lactating Women: What Has Been Done and Where to Next? (2025), and Adherence to Indonesia's Dietary Guidelines Among Lactating Women: Insights for Policy and Practice (2025). Her work has received over 290 citations.