Mary Brushe

Dr Brushe is a Senior Research Officer at Telethon Kids Institute whose research focuses on understanding and supporting the health, development and education of young children. She has a particular interest in screen time in early childhood and how families can be best supported to use screen time in healthy ways. Her PhD also focused on the early home language environments, how that impacts early development and early life socioeconomic inequalities. Mary also collaborates on a range of projects focusing on children and adolescent mental health and wellbeing, food insecurity and school breakfast programs, and evaluations of government early years programs.  

Dr Brushe has expertise in social epidemiology, longitudinal data analysis, participant recruitment and data collection, the development of interventions through co-design methodologies, literature review/synthesis, public health advocacy, and research translation to ensure her research reaches policy makers and the community. 

Mary is also the Vice President of the Public Health Association of Australia (SA Branch), an active member of the 0-3 Early Years Taskforce in South Australia, the PHAA Child and Youth Health Special Interest Group, and the Co-Chair of the Student and Postdoc Committee for the International Social Epidemiology Society. She is always interested in forming new collaborations with passionate researchers, policymakers or practitioners working in public health and the early years system.