Cristina Godinho

Cristina Godinho serves as an Assistant Professor at the National School of Public Health (ENSP), NOVA University Lisbon, and is affiliated with the Comprehensive Health Research Centre (CHRC). She teaches and coordinates postgraduate and doctoral programs while maintaining active research and leadership roles.

Her research centers on health promotion, specifically investigating determinants of health behavior change in critical areas including healthy eating, physical activity, and vaccination uptake. She specializes in developing and evaluating personalized intervention strategies and health communication frameworks, with strong emphasis on practical implementation in public health contexts.

With over forty-five peer-reviewed publications, her work demonstrates consistent focus on behavioral science applications in public health crises. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she contributed significantly as a member of Portugal's Behavioral Sciences Working Group and through WHO technical consultations on behavior change, physical activity, nutrition, and obesity.

She currently holds the position of Deputy Director for the National Program for the Promotion of Physical Activity at Portugal's Directorate-General for Health and serves as Associate Editor for "Psicologia, Reflexão e Crítica" (Springer Nature).

Prior academic appointments include visiting researcher at Kent State University, associate researcher at University College London (UCL) and the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences (University of Lisbon), and Visiting Assistant Professor roles at ISCTE-IUL and the Catholic University of Portugal.

She earned her PhD in Psychology (European doctorate) through a joint program between ISCTE-IUL and Freie Universität Berlin, complemented by postgraduate studies in Data Analysis for Social Sciences at ISCTE-IUL.