Congratulations to the newly minted Professor Lisa Gold
Congratulations to one of DHE‘s senior academics, Lisa Gold, on her promotion to Professor!
Lisa is currently providing economic input into evaluations of a range of public health interventions in maternal and child health, including trials of potential health- and welfare-improving interventions for midwifery care and support, family violence prevention, management of childhood wheeze, and language development support in primary school-aged children.
As the lead for the maternal and child health stream, Lisa is involved in a number of exciting research projects alongside her team, detailed below.
Minds@play
Mary Rose Angeles and Prof. Lisa Gold.
Understanding the effectiveness of a teacher‐led mindfulness intervention for student outcomes: A cluster randomised controlled trial: Minds@play
The Minds@play project investigates a teacher-led mindfulness-based intervention for new school entrants to determine whether it generates positive outcomes, such as immediate attention/short-term memory, inhibition, working memory and cognitive flexibility, socio-emotional well-being, emotion regulation, mental health-related behaviours, and sustained changes in teacher practice and classroom interactions.
‘Our objective is to evaluate whether the intervention is a value for money investment by comparing its costs to the benefits it provides,’ Mary says.
‘Currently, our colleagues at another university are analysing the outcomes. We are working on the costing paper to highlight the cost of the intervention, and the economic evaluation aspect is scheduled to start later this year.’
Mary is involved in:
1. Alcohol-Related Harms Costing Model (ARHCM)
- Team: Jaithri Ananthapavan and Mary Rose Angeles (with previous DHE member, Paul Crosland)
- The Alcohol-Related Harms Costing Model (ARHCM) is an interactive costing tool that can quantify direct and indirect costs associated with alcohol use. The study focuses on the economic costs of alcohol-related harms in New South Wales. The ARHCM enables NSW Health staff to compare costs borne by a particular community with the purported economic benefits proposed by the new liquor licence.
2. Challenges for Medicare and universal health care in Australia since 2000
- Team: Mary Rose Angeles (with previous DHE members, Paul Crosland and Martin Hensher)
- A recently published paper summarizes the challenges for Medicare and universal health care in Australia since 2000. The project team concluded that the key challenges identified in this study continue to threaten the sustainability and equity of the universal healthcare system in Australia. Various piecemeal reforms that have occurred over the past years have not been adequate to address these issues. Effective, concerted reforms are now needed to overcome these challenges.
Disrupting Child Sexual Exploitation (DICE)
Sithara Wanni Arachchige Dona and Prof. Lisa Gold
The DICE project aims to explore the implementation of three primary elements of an enhanced child sexual exploitation response:
- multiagency working;
- trauma-informed disruptive policing; and
- attention to children and young people going missing from residential and home-based statutory care as a consequence of child sexual exploitation.
‘From a health economics perspective, the research team will conduct an economic evaluation of the implementation of the intervention,’ says Sithara.
‘I look forward to systematically reviewing evidence on the economic evaluation of similar interventions and conducting a cost-benefit analysis of the DICE project in Victoria under the supervision of Prof. Lisa Gold.’
This project looks across sites in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland with support from Department of Social Services (DSS), the Australian Federal Police, and the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE). The University of Melbourne is the lead partner.
