Zara Boulton

Zara Boulton is a Researcher and Gender Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Advisor at the Telethon Kids Institute, before which they completed an Honours degree in Psychology. Zara’s research broadly focuses on understanding the underlying factors that influence inequalities during childhood and adolescence, generating interventions and resources to improve the health and development of children, adolescents, and young people, and ensuring high-quality evidence drives policy and practice changes across Australia.

Zara’s research expertise includes early childhood health, development and education, trans young people’s health, screen time during the early years, child, adolescent, and youth mental health, young people’s social and emotional wellbeing, academic outcomes among school students, and public health advocacy. Zara’s leading research identifies and addresses critical health and wellbeing inequities among trans children, adolescents, and young people, by exploring population-level outcomes among more than 65,000 cisgender and trans children and young people. Beyond their leading research, Zara also provides support across multiple research projects, with the aim of producing relevant research papers, research translation material, and government reports.

Within their role as Gender Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Advisor, Zara supports the execution of strategy and implementation of GEDI actions throughout the Institute. Responsible for supporting the maintenance of crucial links with the whole of Institute engagement and communication in relation to gender equity, diversity and inclusivity, Zara provides support to several Institute committees and leadership positions to facilitate the implementation of gender equity, diversity, and inclusivity initiatives. In particular, this includes driving change across the Institute by contributing to the development of submissions for accreditation schemes for gender equity, diversity, and inclusion.