Pacific, Climate & Environment Profile Series: Professor Corinne Caillaud

As AFRAN celebrates 10 years of connecting people, knowledge and expertise across France, Australia and the Pacific, our Pacific, Climate & Environment Profile Series continues to highlight the researchers whose work is helping shape a healthier, more sustainable and connected region.

Today, we are pleased to feature Professor Corinne Caillaud, Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney and Lead of the Pacific.Youth.Connect research group at the Charles Perkins Centre. Her work explores how the environments in which young people live, move, eat, sleep and connect influence their health and wellbeing—with a particular focus on adolescents in Pacific communities. At the heart of her approach is a fundamental principle: addressing Pacific challenges requires Pacific expertise and Pacific peoples-led research.

From the laboratory to everyday life

Originally trained at the University of Montpellier in France, Corinne began her career in exercise physiology, studying how the human body responds to physical activity under controlled laboratory conditions. After around ten years as an academic in France, she moved to Australia in 2005. Over time, her research began to move beyond the laboratory. She became increasingly interested in a broader question: how do young people actually live? How much do they move? How do they sleep? What influences their health behaviours? And how do their family, cultural, social and digital environments shape those behaviours? This evolution has led to an increasingly interdisciplinary research programme spanning physical activity, adolescent health, digital health and participatory research.

Understanding youth health in the Pacific

Corinne's connection with the Pacific began through research using activity trackers and digital health tools to promote physical activity. For the past decade, she has worked with researchers including Dr Olivier Galy and colleagues across the Pacific, developing collaborations that have progressively expanded from individual projects into long-term regional partnerships.

Today, her research focuses particularly on adolescent health and wellbeing in Pacific communities. Her team works with activity trackers, apps and other digital health programmes while also developing Pacific-specific health databases and tools. This local dimension is essential. Digital health technologies developed elsewhere cannot simply be transferred into Pacific communities unchanged. They need to respond to local realities, cultures and priorities if they are to make a meaningful difference.

Research with young people, not simply on young people

A central part of Corinne's work is changing the role young people play in research. Her team increasingly uses participatory research approaches, inviting young people to help identify research priorities and co-design the interventions intended for them. This shift may sound simple, but it fundamentally changes the research process. Young people bring knowledge about their own lives that researchers cannot reproduce from the outside. Giving them a genuine role in defining problems and designing solutions can therefore help ensure that research responds to the issues that actually matter to them. The ultimate objective is not simply to publish findings, but to produce evidence that can contribute to better health policies and meaningful improvements in people's lives.

Building Pacific research capacity

For Corinne, meaningful participation also needs to extend beyond individual research projects. More health data needs to be generated within the Pacific, with Pacific researchers and communities taking a leading role in deciding what questions should be investigated and how research should be conducted. This requires investment in local research capacity, enabling Pacific researchers to lead their own projects while drawing on both international methodologies and approaches grounded in Pacific knowledge and contexts. International collaboration can play an important role—but, as Corinne emphasises, it should support rather than replace Pacific research leadership.

As she puts it:

“Solving Pacific challenges requires Pacific expertise and Pacific peoples-led research.” 

Connecting health with wider transformations

Corinne's research also demonstrates how difficult it is to consider health in isolation. Physical activity, nutrition, sleep and wellbeing are influenced by much wider transformations—from changing food systems and environmental pressures to the rapid spread of digital technologies. Digitalisation is particularly interesting in the Pacific. Communities sometimes described as geographically “remote” are nevertheless increasingly connected through smartphones and digital platforms. This makes the region an important place for understanding how global transformations interact with local cultures and ways of life. Understanding these connections is essential for designing health interventions that remain relevant as Pacific societies continue to change.

When small connections become long-term collaborations

Corinne's story is also closely connected to AFRAN's own history: she has been involved with the network for around ten years. Over that period, AFRAN activities have provided opportunities to meet researchers, develop collaborations and bring different perspectives into conversation. An AFRAN conference on “Children & Screens”, for example, strengthened international research collaborations around children and digital technologies, while also bringing young people's own voices into the discussion through interviews with students from the Lycée Condorcet de Sydney.

For Corinne, these experiences illustrate the value of research networks, mobility opportunities and even relatively small amounts of funding. A conference, a research visit or a small grant may appear modest in isolation. But the connection created through that first opportunity can develop over years into a much larger research partnership. As AFRAN celebrates its first decade, Corinne's journey captures exactly this dynamic: connections becoming collaborations, collaborations becoming long-term partnerships, and those partnerships creating opportunities for research with genuine regional impact. And throughout that process, one principle remains central: the future of Pacific health research should increasingly be shaped and led by the people who know the region best.

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