Caroline Finch AO is an Australian sports injury epidemiologist and sports injury prevention researcher. Her research has been adopted and used to directly inform safety policy by Government Departments of Sport and Health, health promotion and injury prevention agencies, and peak sports bodies both within Australia and internationally. Her injury prevention research has been applied to falls in older people, road safety, workplace safety and injuries in children.
Education
Finch graduated from Monash University, Melbourne in 1983 with a BSc (Hons, 1st Class) majoring in statistics. In 1985 La Trobe University awarded her a MSc in Statistics. In 1995 she was awarded a PhD in Mathematical Statistics from Monash University for a thesis titled: Fasting plasma glucose distributions and their implications for the diagnostic criteria for non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus in Pacific populations.
At high school Finch was interested in disease prevention. As an undergraduate student she realised this interest could be combined with her strong mathematics and statistics skills which led to her career as an epidemiologist and biostatistician.
Career
Finch began work as a Researcher at the Monash University Accident Research Centre training in injury research from 1992 until 1997 and continued from 2001 to 2003 within the Monash University, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine.
From 2003 to 2006 Finch was Professor and Director, NSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre, University of New South Wales and then held the position of Research Professor, School of Human Movement and Sport Sciences, University of Ballarat until 2010.
In 2010 she returned to Monash Injury Research Institute as Research Professor and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Principal Research Fellow in the Australian Centre for Research into Injury in Sport and its Prevention (ACRISP). ACRISP is one of only nine centres worldwide recognised as International Research Centres for Prevention of Injury and Protection of Athlete Health and supported by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Finch became the Robert HT Smith Professor and Personal Chair at Federation University, Ballarat, Australia in 2013. In December 2017 she was appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia.
Finch has held positions as a sports injury prevention adviser to the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, the Australian Sports Commission, Sports Medicine Australia, Sport and Recreation Victoria, Department of Human Services (Victoria), the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, The Australian Football League and other national and state sports bodies. She is a continuing Board Member, Sports Medicine Australia, since 2015, a Member of the Concussion Advisory Group for World Rugby, since 2014, a Member of the Victorian Government Sports Injury Prevention Taskforce from 2011 to 2013 and a Member of the National Sports Safety Framework Committee in 1996,1997 and 2003.
Funding for Finch's research has come from the NHMRC, Australian Research Council, VicHealth, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the US and Canadian National Institutes of Health, Australian Federal and State government departments for health and sport and from peak sports bodies including the International Rugby Board, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the Australian Football League and Cricket Australia.
Finch has worked to improve community safety in sport and to drive significant change around children's and women's sport and in the Australian school system, to improve safety equipment and training methods in individual sports and to create a database for sports injuries. The work of Finch and her teams has led to government departments of health and peak sport bodies recognising that they have a duty of care to everyone, not just the elite athletes and that sports safety is their business as well.
Finch is a Senior Associate Editor (Injury Prevention) for the British Journal of Sports Medicine and the Injury Prevention and Health Promotion BJSM Series and a member of the Editorial Boards of the international journals: Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, Injury Epidemiology and Sports Medicine. She has published over 250 articles.