Rona is Professor of Public Health Research and leads the Centre for Public Health Research within the School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol.  She is the Director of the DECIPHer Centre in Bristol, the Bristol lead for the NIHR School for Public Health Research and she is an NIHR Senior Investigator. 

Rona leads programmes of research concerned with multiple risk behaviour in adolescence and health promotion in schools. She is currently involved in conducting a number of systematic reviews, including Cochrane Reviews of the WHO Health Promoting School Framework for improving the health and well-being of students and staff, and of interventions to prevent multiple risk behaviours in young people.

Rona has a strong interest in methodological research, in particular, how to use qualitative methods alongside quantitative approaches, and how to make better use of social and behavioural theory in public health research. She is involved in a number of randomised trials of health improvement interventions for children and young people. With Professor Laurence Moore she founded DECIPHer Impact, a not-for-profit company dedicated to licensing and supporting the dissemination of evidenced-based, public health improvement interventions.