Meet Alex: Participant Profile

Alex Marsh is on our Community Advisory Committee as a Gen2 participant. She is also the Secretary of the committee and does an awesome job of writing and distributing our minutes for us. We sat down with Alex to chat about the Raine Study and what it means to her.

The Raine Study has been part of your life, what does it mean to you? Why do you keep participating?
The Raine Study normalised seeing a range of health professionals and researchers, since before I was born.
With family in the medical and research fields, it was more a question of why would I not keep participating when so much information can be collected.

What has your experience with the Raine Study been over the years? How has perhaps your perception of what you have been involved in changed from when you were a child, teenager and now adult?
As a child and teenager, I can only remember it as a positive because we got the day off school!

Now that I have a chronic illness and I am studying Occupational Therapy, I can now see how important it is to have willing participants to undergo testing that will have such an impact on not just us, but future generations.

Why do you see the Raine Study as important?
It’s a way to give back to the community in a local, national and international sense by giving up one or two days every couple of years, while learning about yourself at the same time.

It’s one of the most unique ways of volunteering that I can think of and carries a lot of weight when you think of the research that has come out and will continue to come out from the data collected from us and the impact it can have on our families, preventative health and public health.

What has been your most memorable Raine Study moment over the years?
Definitely the opportunity to fly to Canberra with Professor Fiona Stanley on behalf of the Raine Study to discuss what adolescents concerns for the future were.

Why did you choose to be part of the Community Advisory Committee?
If the Raine Study wants to be successful in the future and have happy participants as well as meaningful outcomes, I see it as important that researchers and participants have the opportunity to integrate and talk with one another. I love that this is an opportunity for the participants to have a voice and potentially direct studies in the future to where the cohort sees most beneficial.

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