School of Community Health
Dr Rod Pope
Director, Centre for Inland Health
Position Senior Research Fellow
Campus Wagga Wagga
Office Room 476/218
Phone(02) 6933 2877
Fax (02) 6933 2912
EMAIL ROD POPE 
Rod has spent most of his life and career, to date, in inland Australia . After graduating as a Physiotherapist in 1988, he worked for several years in clinical and occupational rehabilitation physiotherapy in the Riverina region of NSW, where he currently resides with his wife and young family. He was then contracted for 10 years to provide clinical and rehabilitation physiotherapy services at the Army Recruit Training Centre, Kapooka. During this time, Rod completed his PhD in the area of exercise-related injury prevention, in which he investigated whether stretching prior to exercise reduced rates of injury in Army recruits and he developed the research basis for fitness screening protocols and standards used currently by the Australian Defence Force to assess the likelihood that applicants will be injured during training or fail to complete training. He also established systems for injury surveillance and prevention at the Army Recruit Training Centre, which were later adopted by the ADF as the basis for its Defence Injury Prevention Program.
In 2000, Rod completed further studies in psychology and, on the basis of his injury prevention work at the Army Recruit Training Centre, was contracted by the Defence Health Service to establish and implement the Australian Defence Injury Prevention Program, across the ADF. Rod continued in this role until March 2006, when he took up an appointment at Charles Sturt University as Senior Research Fellow (Research Development), in the Faculty of Health Studies (now Faculty of Science).
In late 2006 and after some formative work, he was appointed as the inaugural Director of the Charles Sturt University Centre for Inland Health. In this role, Rod continues to lead programs of research in the areas of injury prevention and inland community health. He also continues to practice professionally in the field of occupational health physiotherapy, particularly injury prevention.
Areas of Research Interest
Injury prevention, injury surveillance & injury risk management (military non-combat injuries, rural community and occupational injuries, sports & exercise-related injuries).
Inland rural health (community capacity building, innovation in service delivery & workforce, bridging the research-practice gap, evidence-based and cost-effective rural health care).