Health Services Research / Implementation Science
Health services research is a multidisciplinary field that aims to build evidence about the organisation, delivery, financing and outcomes of health and care services to inform policy and practice
About this theme
Zooming in on the delivery of care, Implementation Science is the scientific study of methods to promote the uptake of research findings into routine practice in health and social care. What we do matters now more than ever. The Australian Government vision is better health and wellbeing for all Australians, now and for future generations. If we are to realise this vision, Health, social care and aged care services need to evolve to meet new patterns of ill health, demand and opportunities from new treatments and technologies.
Health services research (HSR) studies address the planning, distribution, organisation, provision, quality, effectiveness, efficiency, and outcome of health care services. HSR researchers in the School of Health Sciences are conducting research across a wide variety of clinical areas, to discover new and effective clinical and therapeutic interventions.
Implementation scientists in the School investigate implementation problems (evidence-practice gaps in care). Whether the care gaps involve established practices (such as over-prescribing of antibiotics or over-transfusing of blood products) or new and emerging interventions (such as pre-habilitation for people prior to cancer surgery or empowerment therapies for people with psychosis), changing practice is difficult and often needs support. Implementation researchers also investigate inappropriate variations in care with the aim of reducing health inequalities.
Not all implementation strategies work, so to avoid wasted time and effort, we need to build a theory-informed evidence base to discover effective strategies for closing care gaps. Our vision is to enhance health outcomes, reduce health inequalities and improve health service users’ experience of care.
Meet our researchers in health services research and implementation science
- School of Health Sciences
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Audiology and Speech Pathology
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Principal Research Fellow, Hearing Loss and Cognition Program | Research areas include comorbidities and biomarkers/predictors of hearing loss
Email: jsarant@unimelb.edu.au
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Dame Kate Campbell Fellow, Director or Centre of Research Excellence in Speech and Language | Research areas include child speech and language development and speech genomics
Email: amor@unimelb.edu.au
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Senior Lecturer | Research areas include child communication development, stuttering, epidemiological studies, implementation science
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Lecturer | Research areas include global audiology: highlighting the need for prioritised public policies and interventions for the delivery of effective ear and hearing care services in low-and middle-income countries
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Senior Lecturer | Research areas include cochlear implants, maternal input and factors affecting communication development for children with hearing loss
Email: dettmans@unimelb.edu.au
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Nursing
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Lecturer | Research areas include nurse wellbeing and critical care
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Lecturer | Scholarship of learning and teaching
Email: mckeever@unimelb.edu.au
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Lecturer, Course Coordinator Graduate Certificate in Cancer Nursing | Research areas include health services research, emergency department utilisation, cancer nursing
Email: polly.dufton@unimelb.edu.au
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Professor | Research areas include infant and child health, implementation science, families as partners in care
Email: deniseh@unimelb.edu.au
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Professor and Head of Department | Research areas include emergency and critical care nursing
Email: gerdtzmf@unimelb.edu.au
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Senior Lecturer | Research areas include skin integrity, chronic wounds, patient engagement and self-treatment
Email: suzanne.kapp@unimelb.edu.au
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Optometry and Vision Sciences
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Associate Professor and Dame Kate Campbell Fellow | Research areas include ocular diagnostics and therapeutics, tear biomarkers, clinical trials and research translation.
Email: ldownie@unimelb.edu.au
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Orthoptist, Clinical Vision Research Fellow | Research areas include Digital Health, Childrens Vision, Public Eye Health, Eyecare across the Lifespan, Binocular Vision.
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Optometrist | Research interests include inherited retinal diseases, ocular imaging, gene therapy trials, and evidence synthesis.
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Postdoctoral Clinical Research Fellow | Research areas include dry eye disease, blue light and ocular health, evidence synthesis and translational research.
Email: sumeer.singh@unimelb.edu.au
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Assoc. Professor | Research areas include preclinical investigation of vision and the retinal vasculature in healthy ageing; mechanisms of age-related susceptibility to neurodegeneration.
Email: bvb@unimelb.edu.au
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Lecturer, optometrist and human visual neuroscientist | Research areas include understanding eye and brain changes with healthy and pathological ageing, childhood and adolescent development, vision anomalies in ophthalmic and neurological disorders.
Email: bnguyen@unimelb.edu.au
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Clinical Research Optometrist | Research areas include management of dry eye disease, childhood myopia and developement of myopia control devices.
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Senior Clinical Research Optometrist | Research areas include anterior ocular disease, therapeutic clinical trials and research translation.
Email: ji-hyun.lee@unimelb.edu.au
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Research Fellow | Research areas include Neural mechanisms of visual attention and predictive coding; visual perception; sleep research.
Email: ele@unimelb.edu.au
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Physiotherapy
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NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, Dame Kate Campbell Senior Research Fellow | Research includes lower limb biomechanics of walking and running, and the clinical and biomechanical effects of foot-based interventions for musculoskeletal conditions
Email: kade.paterson@unimelb.edu.au
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Associate Professor and Dame Kate Campbell Fellow | Research areas include exercise and physical activity for patients with lung cancer, other cancers, critical illness and respiratory diseases
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Lecturer | Research areas include health services research, multi-disciplinary models of allied health care for people with cancer, measurement of physical activity
Email: larae@unimelb.edu.au
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Associate Professor in Physiotherapy
Email: selina.parry@unimelb.edu.au
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Honorary | Research areas include Sport and Exercise Medicine, tendinopathy and osteoarthritis
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Senior Research Fellow | Research areas include the brain-behaviour nexus during rehabilitation after stroke
Email: kate.hayward@unimelb.edu.au
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NHMRC Research Fellow | Research expertise includes anterior cruciate ligament injury and knee osteoarthritis outcomes and interventions
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Chair in Physiotherapy at Austin Health | Research areas include sleep and breathing disorders in neuromuscular disease, health systems and data research, clinical trials of therapies and care models
Email: djberl@unimelb.edu.au
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Senior Lecturer, Post-Doctoral Researcher | Research areas include physical activity after neurological injury, stroke recovery and rehabilitation
Email: natalie.fini@unimelb.edu.au
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Senior Research Fellow, NHMRC Emerging Leader, Dame Kate Campbell Fellow | Research areas include osteoarthritis. exercise, biomechanics; meta-analyses, clinical trials
Email: halm@unimelb.edu.au
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Research areas include improving the health of people with chronic musculoskeletal conditions, especially osteoarthritis, implementation science, and increasing access to care, including telerehabilitation and digital health
Email: ranash@unimelb.edu.au
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Deputy Head of Physiotherapy | Research areas include exercise for chronic musculoskeletal conditions, hip & knee osteoarthritis, outcome measurement, meta-analysis
Email: fdobson@unimelb.edu.au
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Senior Lecturer | Research focus is on design of models of health service delivery to implement evidence-based practice for osteoarthritis and other chronic conditions
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Associate Professor | Research expertise in expertise in women’s health, specifically disorders related to the pelvic floor
Email: h.frawley@unimelb.edu.au
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Associate Dean (Research) Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences | Her research interest include infant and child development, early intervention, parent well-being, consumer engagement and implementation science
Email: aspittle@unimelb.edu.au
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Professor of Physiotherapy Rehabilitation | Research areas include neurological gait disorders, running, task-specific strength training and focal spasticity management
Email: gavinw@unimelb.edu.au
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Lecturer | Research areas include stroke rehabilitation, balance training, falls prevention, motion-tracking technologies and telehealth
Email: bower@unimelb.edu.au
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Research Fellow | Research areas include the impact of developmental therapy and early intervention on brain development and rehabilitation in the newborn period and beyond, and the role parents play in delivering this intervention
Email: abbey.eeles@unimelb.edu.au
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Lecturer in Physiotherapy
Email: tandyh@unimelb.edu.au
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Lecturer | Research areas including paediatrics, disability and inclusive participation in physical activity
Email: r.toovey@unimelb.edu.au
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A/Professor Physiotherapy Western Health | Research interests include rehabilitation and fall prevention in older people and people with neurological disorders
Email: csaid@unimelb.edu.au
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Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, NHMRC Investigator Fellow and Dame Kate Campbell Fellow. Director of the Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine | Research focus is on the management of musculoskeletal conditions particularly osteoarthritis
Email: k.bennell@unimelb.edu.au
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Research Assistant | Areas of research include telehealth and implementation of health services to help improve the lives of those with chronic musculoskeletal pain (e.g. osteoarthritis)
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Social Work
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Research Assistant
Email: isobe.j@unimelb.edu.au
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Research Fellow | Research areas include policy, program and practice implementation to improve the lives of people living with disability, and their families in their communities
Email: hickeyl@unimelb.edu.au
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Associate Professor in Social Work, Director of Learning and Teaching, MSHS | Research areas include impact of criminal justice system, trauma and mental health, alcohol and other drugs, domestic & family violence, children and families across borders and health/mental health in forensic systems
Email: drose@unimelb.edu.au
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Professor - Direct Practice | Research areas include clarifying, measuring and evaluating the outcomes of social interventions in health and mental health, focusing on the contribution of formal and informal social network factors
Email: ljoubert@unimelb.edu.au
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Course Coordinator, MSW | Research areas include navigating complex service systems, disability and the NDIS, social work in the legal and justice systems and the impact of social policy on health and wellbeing
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Associate Professor | kNOwVAWdata; safe, ethical and inclusive measurement of violence against women and children with a focus in Asia and the Pacific
Email: k.diemer@unimelb.edu.au
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Research fellow | Specialises in interviews with children and young people about sensitive issues like child sexual abuse and family violence. Interested in research collaborations that benefit the health and social lives of children and young people in Australia and across the globe
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Professor | Dedicated to optimising the health of all family members where there is domestic and family violence
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Post Doctoral Research Fellow | Research Interests include intervention responses at the intersections between child abuse, domestic violence, mental health and problematic substance use, approaches that promote recovery post-violence and interventions for women who use force in the context of family violence
Email: mkertesz@unimelb.edu.au
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