WATCHE team

Meet the members of the WA Translation and Collaboration in Health Economics (WATCHE).

Team leads

Professor Suzanne Robinson

Professor Suzanne Robinson leads research in health system reform, health economics and digital health, which includes applied economic evaluation and research focusing on resource allocation, and optimal care models. Her research involves working with large linked data sets to explore clinical, economic and policy questions. Suzanne is discipline lead for the Health Economics and Data Analytics (HEDA) group and Co-Director of the Curtin Health Research and Data Analytics Hub. These groups are highly effective and impactful. Suzanne works closely with health organisations at the state, national and international levels. She’s led large partnership research projects to successful completion and been an expert advisor for a number of government organisations. With her work in health system reform being influential in both national and local policy developments and practical application and translation. She is also Rural and Remote Flagship Research and Education Director for the Digital Health CRC which secured $200 million in cash and in kind contributions from government and industry partners. Suzanne leads international research on decision making and priority setting and disinvestment in health. This work involves a number of aspects, in particular the use of health data sets to produce an evidence base to inform resource allocation decisions. She is also involved in undertaking economic evaluations alongside clinical trials.

Professor Elizabeth Geelhoed

Dr Elizabeth Geelhoed is a Professor in Health Economics and Policy within the School of Allied Health at UWA and has worked as a health economist in both research and policy development over the past 25 years. Her teaching role has comprised health economics education at graduate and postgraduate levels, including Economic Evaluation within the postgraduate program in WA and internationally. Professor Geelhoed’s experience includes participation on a number of national committees including MSAC ESC, which reviews evidence for consideration of new technologies for government subsidy. Research application has spanned a range of clinical and public health projects, including cardiovascular disease, genetics, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, osteoporosis, health impacts of urban design, health technology assessment and screening for disease prevention. She is CI on current competitive grants totalling more than $12 million and has over 80 publications. Particular interests include methods of economic evaluation for health care programs; the burden of disease and its economic implications; equity; and the integration of economics with epidemiology, clinical medicine and health policy.

Team

Associate Professor Richard Norman is a Health Economist in the Health Economics and Data Analytics Discipline, Curtin School of Population Health. He brings 15 years’ experience both in the UK and Australia. He holds a PhD in Economics from UTS, and a master's degree from the University of York. His research interests include economic evaluation, quality of life, and discrete choice experiments. He is Associate Editor at Value in Health, and is a permanent member of the Economics Sub-Committee of the PBAC.

Email: richard.norman@curtin.edu.au

Marshall is a senior Lecturer in Health Economics in the Health Economics and Data Analytics Discipline at Curtin University's School of Population Health. He brings a strong research interests in the economic evaluation of healthcare programs, health system reform & translational research and application of applied econometric methods to understand economic phenomena. He is a former Fulbright fellow who holds a PhD in Economics from the University at Albany in New York, USA. He has published some of his work in top-ranked peer-reviewed journals including Health Policy and Planning, Journal of Development Studies, International Journal of Social Economics and Nicotine & Tobacco Research.

Email: marshall.makate@curtin.edu.au

Ha Nguyen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Telethon Kids Institute. He has published widely in both academic and policy outlets, with articles appearing in high-ranking economics journals, including Journal of International Economics, Health Economics, American Journal of Health Economics and Social Science & Medicine.

Email: Ha.Nguyen@telethonkids.org.au

John Curtin Distinguished Professor Mark Harris is Co-Director of the Health Economics Cluster and Professor of Econometrics in the School of Economics, Finance and Property, Curtin University, and an Affiliate of the Health Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG), University of York (UK) as well as a visiting scholar to the Health Economics Research Unit, University of Aberdeen (UK). Mark is a recognised world-leader in the field of applied health economics and econometrics. He has secured numerous Tier 1 research grants to conduct research into these areas, often leading to extensive coverage in the mainstream media.

Email: Mark.Harris@curtin.edu.au

Rory is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia with research interests in health economics, health policy, labour and global health. Prior to his PhD studies, Rory worked as a consultant for World Health Organization in Geneva, and as an economist for Deloitte Access Economics.

Associate Professor Khurshid Alam at Murdoch Business School completed his PhD in Health Economics from Monash University. His expertise is in economic evaluation, healthcare financing, health equity and global health. He authored 70 journal articles and is on the editorial board of Plos One and Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation.

Email: khurshid.alam@murdoch.edu.au

Cameron is a junior doctor at Fiona Stanley Hospital and holds honorary positions at Curtin University School of Population Health (adjunct research fellow), the University of Western Australia School of Medicine (clinical lecturer) and the University of Tasmania School of Medicine (adjunct researcher). He sees health economics as a tool to support health workers to weigh diagnostic and treatment options, and to assess public health measures in a data-supported manner.

Email: cameron.wright@curtin.edu.au

Ninh Ha is a post-doctoral research associate at Curtin School of Population Health. Ninh successfully completed her PhD thesis on developing a new time duration measure to better capture continuity of care. She is interested in applications of advanced econometric approaches in linked administrative data to support policy development.

Email: thi.ha@curtin.edu.au

Dr Ian Li is a health and labour economist based at the School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia. Ian has been a CI on grants funded by the NHMRC, the NCSEHE and WA Healthway, and has published his work in Social Science and Medicine, Value in Health, the Economic Record, and Education Economics.

Email: ian.li@uwa.edu.au

Stephanie is currently a Lecturer at the School of Economics, Finance and Property at Curtin University and Adjunct Lecturer at McMaster University. Current projects include using virtual reality as a controlled laboratory environment for exploring health related decision making and working with EQ-5D health preference data to explore the possibility of using alternative statistical strategies for generating population level health utility values.

Email: stephanie.thomas1@curtin.edu.au

Jeff is a Health Economist with strengths in epidemiological and statistical analyses, mathematical modelling, and economic evaluation. Extending on his PhD thesis, Jeff is currently developing a public health value proposition and a business investment case for a group A Streptococcus vaccine under the Global GAS Consortium.

David Youens is a research Associate at Curtin University’s School of Population Health and PhD candidate. David’s PhD focuses on the impacts of continuity of care with the general practitioner on patient health and hospitalisation. David has published economic evaluations of psychosocial interventions as part of clinical trials. David’s research interests include avoidable hospitalisation among chronically ill patients and economic evaluation of healthcare programs.

Email: david.youens@curtin.edu.au

Michael is an applied economist who works in the area of non market valuation, and especially with discrete choice experiments. He has a PhD from the University of Manchester, and maintains strong research links with colleagues there. He has been involved in major research projects in the UK funded by the Food Standards Agency into the costs of food borne disease, and campylobacter. He is also a member of the FSANZ Social Science and Economics Advisory Group.

Email: michael.burton@uwa.edu.au

Associate Professor Delia Hendrie is part of the Health Economics and Data Analytics group at Curtin’s School of Population Health. She is a health economist and teaches on the following units: Health Economics, Economic Evaluation and Decision Making in Health, Strategic and Operational Health Management and Organisation of Health Care Systems. One of Delia’s main research interests is in policy and program evaluation, in particular in relation to evaluating their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. Another area of interest is in health policy and systems research, with a particular focus on health care financing and the allocation of health care resources.

Email: D.V.Hendrie@curtin.edu.au

Huong Le is an economist, a statistician and data analyst at Telethon Kids Institute and The University of Western Australia. She completed her PhD in Economics from The Australian National University and possesses strong analytical and advanced econometric modelling skills. Health economics is her strong research interest. Her research has been published in high-impact journals including Health Economics, American Journal of Health Economics, Review of Income and Wealth and Journal of Population Economics. Her current research focus is using large longitudinal linked data sets to analyse socio-economics issues with focus on topics in the fields of inequality, health, labour, development, and policy impact evaluations.

Email: Huong.Le@telethonkids.org.au

Michael is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. His broad research interests are in health economics and applied econometrics. He has a particular interest in the economics of disability and how health (disability) impacts on economic and social wellbeing. His research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), World Health Organization, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and WA Health.

Email: michael.palmer@uwa.edu.au

Francis is Research Program Head – Population Health at Telethon Kids Institute (TKI); Adjunct Associate Professor, Centre for Child Health Research, at The University of Western Australia; and Associate Professor in the ARC Life Course Centre. He began as a graduate economist at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in 1994, working on national accounts and economic and social surveys before entering academia at TKI in 2008. Francis has over 25 years of experience in large-scale population surveys, linked administrative data, economic and social policy evaluation, and policy translation, with a focus on physical and mental health, Indigenous health, social disadvantage and life course trajectories of children and families. He is interested in economic techniques that support evidence-based and cost-effective public policy.