Universities – Dr Jin Russell’s PhD a decade-long marathon – UoA

Jin has been working two days a week as a paediatrician at Starship Hospital, and, since 2021, three days a week as a community paediatrician in Te Whatu Ora’s population health team. Plus, she has started a family.

“I started the PhD as a paediatric registrar with no children and finished as a specialist paediatrician with two jobs and two children,” Jin says.

Jin was also an important science communicator during the Covid-19 pandemic, while coping with its disruptions to her own work, study, and home routines.

Completing her PhD from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, while juggling her myriad commitments, took her ten years.

“I am a believer that good things take time.”

Having a supportive husband and family, including her young children, certainly helped.

“There’s no sprint here, it has been a slow-run marathon. People ask, ‘how did you do it?’ but I wasn’t trying to do it all the time – I had breaks, and I had to pace myself.”

“Writing my thesis was a chance to not work clinically, to not see patients, or trawl through data or sit in meetings. It was a chance for me to learn and develop new skills.”

As mentioned, Jin was a trusted voice in the media and on social media during the Covid pandemic, countering misinformation as well as offering evidence-based advice to policymakers and families.

“There was a gap in the public discourse during the early phase of the pandemic.

“There wasn’t anyone early on who specifically communicated the needs of children. And we know that in any crisis, children, the elderly, and disabled tend to be more negatively impacted.

“That motivated me to speak up, because there were very few paediatricians who had the epidemiology lens that I had who were community-based paediatricians.”

Jin’s thesis focused on how children’s early environments and experiences influence their developmental outcomes before they enter school.

Using data from the Growing Up in New Zealand study she looked for links between socioeconomic inequities and children’s developmental outcomes. 

She found that children’s language, cognitive and learning skills, as well as their social, emotional and behavioural outcomes, were socioeconomically stratified.

“It is possible to detect inequities in children’s outcomes as early as age two and these gaps persist and may even widen at age four-and-a-half,” she says.
Jin’s interest in this can be traced back to her time working in emergency paediatrics at Middlemore Hospital in South Auckland.

“I was working with a public health physician, and she said to me, ‘Come here and look at the whiteboard. This is the list of all the children in the emergency department. For every single one of these children here, the underlying diagnosis is poverty’.”

“What I found is that many children are being held back from reaching their full developmental and health potential because of the environments that they’re growing up in, and through no fault of their own, and often through no fault of their parents.”

Jin is presenting widely on her findings at conferences.

During her PhD, Jin received a Paediatric Trainee Research Excellence Award from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (2016) and the Starship Foundation Fellowship in Developmental Paediatrics (2020). She was also granted an HRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship for her doctoral studies.

At the time of graduation, she had just started a new role as Chief Clinical Advisor for Child and Youth at the Ministry of Health. She will continue working two days a week as a paediatrician at Starship Hospital.

She is looking forward to the new job, which takes the place of work three days a week as a community paediatrician in Te Whatu Ora’s national population health team.

“I’ll be able to bring all the experiences of the past decade and all of the relationships into that new role.”

While Jin hopes to collaborate on future research projects, her focus will be on translating evidence into policy in her new role.

“In terms of advice, I’m giving evidence-based and robust advice. I know how to review literature, and I am keen to also keep very connected to the academic communities so that I understand new research relevant for child and youth health and wellbeing.”

Reflecting on the last decade; “The biggest challenges have been two kids, trying to be a good wife and good person, and finishing specialist training as a paediatrician.

Her husband Matheson, two young boys and her parents, both doctors, will all be at Jin’s graduation.

“My sons are so proud, and Matheson, my husband, who’s an academic at the University of Auckland, a philosopher, has joked about trying to get on stage with his regalia to congratulate me.”

Jin is fairly confident he will not.

“We will have to see whether he keeps that promise.”