- Dr Jaithri Ananthapavan received the 2022 Premier’s Award for Health and Medical Research in Public Health.
- Deakin Distinguished Prof Anna Peeters AM was nominated as Science and Technology Australia (STA) STEM ambassador to Senator Sarah Henderson. This partnership aims to forge stronger ties between science, technology and public policy, supporting evidence-based policymaking.
- Deakin Distinguished Prof Anna Peeters AM was awarded an honorary Skou Professorship at Aarhus University, Denmark
- Honoured in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours:
– Prof Anna Peeters AM for her significant service to community health, particularly obesity research.
– Prof Julie Considine AO for distinguished service to medicine in the field of emergency nursing, to tertiary education, and to professional associations
– Institute for Health Transformation Advisory Board member Robyn Batten AM for her service to the not-for-profit, health and aged care sectors.
- Dr Vicki Brown was one of four Deakin University early career researchers officially recognised in the 2023 Victorian Young Tall Poppy Science Awards Ceremony, for her innovative work in health economics.
- Prof Angela Dew was awarded the inaugural Excellence in Communicating with Refugee Communities’ category of the NSW Multicultural Health Communication Awards 2023 for her work in Co-designing Resources for Syrian and Iraqi People with Disability by NSW Refugee Health Service
- Honorary Prof Hanny Calache, Dr Hannah Pitt and Dr Sean Randall and the LinXmart team, were named amongst the finalists in the 2023 Research Australia Health and Medical Research Awards for their innovative work in clinical dentistry, reducing gambling harm and record linkage.
- A/Prof Eric Lau was named in the top 1% in world in their field after the release of the annual Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers 2023 list curated by the Institute for Scientific Information.
- Prof Gary Sacks won a Sax Institute Research Action Award for his exceptional work advancing obesity prevention policy leading the Food-EPI Australia initiative. Read more about the award here and watch the video here.
Deakin University Vice-Chancellor’s Awards 2023
- A/Prof Lemai Nguyen was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Awards 2023 in the category of Education and Employability – Deakin University Award for Teaching Excellence – Building Futures Together Co-creation Strategies for Student Employability
- Jennifer Halliday was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Awards 2023 in the category of a Rising Star Award.
- Dr Jaithri Ananthapavan was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Awards 2023 in the category of Research and Innovation –Vice-Chancellor’s Early Career Researcher Award for Career Excellence. Read more about her work here
Deakin Faculty of Health Partnership in Practice Awards
IHT researchers were successful in 6 of 7 categories in the inaugural Deakin Faculty of Health Partnership in Practice Awards:
- Dr Sara Holton, Dr Karen Wynter & Professor Bodil Rasmussen won the mid-career researchers award for their partnership with Western Health, Eastern Health, Epworth Healthcare, Monash Health, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Victorian Healthcare Association and Odense University Hospital, Denmark on the project Psychosocial impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers and students
- Dr Danielle Hitch, Dr Sara Holton, Prof Bodil Rasmussen & A/Prof Genevieve Pepin won the Health Service Partnership award for their partnership with Western Health, University of Melbourne and National Ageing Research Institute on the project Experiences of health, disability, and recovery after COVID19 diagnosis
- Prof Adrian Cameron, Prof Gary Sacks, Dr Tailane Scapin, Ms Jasmine Chan, Ms Ella Robinson, Ms Sarah Dean won the International partnership award for their partnership with UNICEF East-Asia and Pacific Regional Office on the project Promoting healthier retail food environments in East-Asia and globally
- Sithara Wanni Arachchige Dona, Dieu Nguyen, Mary Rose Angeles, Dr. Paul Cooper, Dr. Natalie Winter, Dr. Mary Lou Chatterton, Prof. Anna Peeters, Prof. Martin Hensher won the Commercial Partnership award for their partnership with Medibank Private Limited on the project Developing and piloting a framework to evaluate health apps to enable the promotion of a curated set of evidence-based health apps to consumers in the Australian setting.
- Dr Olivia King, Mr Drew Aras, Emma West, A/Prof Anna Wong Shee, Dr Louise Greenstock, Dr Michael Field, Dr Ella Ottrey, Prof Warren Payne and colleagues from Western Alliance and Deakin Rural Health won the Rural and Regional Research award for their partnership with Barwon Health, Colac Area Health, East Grampians Health Service, Federation University, Grampians Health, South West Healthcare, St John of God, Western District Health Service, Western Victoria Primary Health Network for the project Western Alliance’s Supporting Translation of Research in Rural and Regional Settings (STaRR) Program
- A/Prof Rachel Laws, Dr Penny Love, Prof Karen Campbell, Prof Kylie Hesketh, Dr Sarah Marshall, Ms Anthea Gregorio, Ms Kathy McConnell, Ms Ricky Gelman, Ms Sonya Stanley, Ms Toni Penny, Ms Sheree Spiteri, Dr Victoria Brown, Prof Liliana Orellana, Dr Harriet Koorts along with colleagues from Deakin’s Institute for Physical activity and Nutrition won the Informing Policy-Practice award and took out the overall award for their partnership with Victorian Department of Health, Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (Vic Health), Municipal Association of Victoria, Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service (VACCHO), Sunraysia Community Health, Western Alliance, Raising Children Network, City of Whittlesea, The University of Sydney, RMIT University for the project INfantFeeding Active Play and Nutrition (INFANT): From RCT to state wide scale
IHT EMCR Awards
INDIVIDUAL AWARDS
Individual Awards for Research Excellence aims to recognise researchers with an excellent track record in terms of quality and contribution to science. There are three categories for individual awards:
Individual PhD Award
PhD Students – Current students or students’ one-year* post thesis PhD submission for research conducted between 2021-2023.
Simone McCarthy, DoH
Since 2018, Simone has published 15 peer reviewed journal articles, four government reports, four published conference abstracts and one book chapter. She has also led 2 successful external grants totalling over $84,000.
She has led numerous successful research and community engagement collaborations both nationally and internationally including the World Health Organisation, Public Health Foundation of India, Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation (VRGF), VicHealth, and the Cancer Council WA.
Simone recently testified to the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into online gambling, which led to recommendations for a comprehensive gambling ad ban. Her research was also used to advocate for reduced opening hours of gambling venues (announced by the Victorian Government July 2023). She has engaged with national media, including writing for The Conversation, providing expert commentary to The Guardian, and regular appearances on ABC radio across the country.
Individual ECR Award
This award is for emerging researchers with less than 5 years* post PhD or other research related employment for research conducted between 2021-2023.
Edith Holloway, ACBRD
Since 2021, Edith has 12 Peer-reviewed journal articles published, with 42 co-authors and her research has been cited in 22 countries. In the same time she has grant income as lead of $1,615,329.
She has multiple local and (inter)national, multidisciplinary collaborations with leaders in health psychology, behavioural diabetes, ophthalmology, endocrinology, health economics and general practice.
Edith led the development of a web-based resource for reducing psychological barriers to Insulin Therapy. She worked with a clinician/epidemiologist to develop a novel screening model for diabetic retinopathy using artificial intelligence and this has been replicated in Poland, Rwanda, China and New Zealand.
Erica Reeve, GLOBE
Erica has 10 peer-reviewed articles as Lead Author and another 14 as second author, 86% which are in Q1 journals.
She has secured over $3.3M in competitive research funds in the past 5 years (including as Lead, Chief investigator), including both external and industry funding.
She has collaborated with leading researchers and policy actors across the Pacific, Asia and Europe, and have been invited to present to senior bureaucrats across many countries.
She has co-facilitated a new research collaboration between Deakin IHT, the University of Sydney, the Department of Health in Victoria and the NSW Health Department recently attracted $1.4m in NHMRC grant funding.
Individual MCR Award
Awarded to experienced researchers 5-10 years* post PhD or other research related employment for research conducted between 2021-2023.
Serene Yoong, GLOBE
Serene has been chief investigator on approximately $18 million in research funding primarily from NHMRC, ARC, MRFF and the Heart Foundation on a range of collaborative, multidisciplinary projects targeting community and clinical health services.
She is ranked in the top 1% of authors in health promotion in Australia (expertscape) and identified as one of the top 300 most productive publishers of nutrition research.
She co-facilitated a group of international researchers to develop guidance for conducting implementation trials. This group comprised trial methodologists, health economists, statisticians, implementation scientists, policy makers, and health service managers and resulted in a publication in the BMJ in 2021.
This resource is being used by Australian translational research centers, and in leading international implementation science training courses, including in the United States, Australia, and Ireland.
GROUP AWARDS
In the Group Awards category, the group could be made up of a combination of EMCRs and Senior Researchers, noting the role of the EMCRs needed to be moderate or extensive.
Impact
This Award recognises the importance of Research Impact to the Institute’s strategy.
Mary Rose Angeles, DHE
As lead research fellow in a team led by Professor Martin Hensher, Mary conducted a narrative review that identified knowledge gaps, adapted and developed an economic model to analyse the impacts of Long COVID, resulting in significant contributions to the evidence on the health and economic impact of Long COVID in Australia.
Some of these publications were used as references or informed government reports, clinical guidelines, and academic publications. Her co-authored report was used as reference in the Long COVID submission inquiry, demonstrating the role of their research in informing policy discussions and influencing strategic decisions.
Mary’s Long COVID research has attracted significant media attention, highlighting the wide-reaching impact of her work with Martin Hensher. This included a Deeble policy brief which was assessed by the Analysis and Policy Observatory as one of the most interesting, influential and important resources in 2021.
Multidisciplinary Research
This Award acknowledges outstanding contributions to research by a team of IHT researchers who are collaborating across discipline boundaries and who have combined their expertise to produce achievements of outstanding national or international significance.
Florentine Martino, Navoda Liyana Pathirana & Kathryn Backholer, GLOBE
The SCANNER research project is a unique interdisciplinary collaboration between the GLOBE and the IISRI and is the first application of artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing regulation. This innovative partnership combines the expertise of public health policy researchers from GLOBE with AI researchers from IISRI, fostering the development of a system that facilitates governments to monitor accountability and compliance of existing regulation related to the marketing of harmful products in a low-resource, novel manner.
Partnerships
This Award recognises the importance that IHT researchers play in the process of initiating, developing, enhancing and managing IHT’s research partnerships.
Erica Reeve, GLOBE
WHO European Region
Over the last 4 years Erica has led the partnership with colleagues in the World Health Organization (WHO) Office of the European Region to develop research that assists with them with the implementation of diet-related noncommunicable (NCD) policies in the Region.
Using action-oriented policy analysis methodologies, her research has codesigned healthy and sustainable public food procurement policies, addressing a current policy priority in Australia and Europe. The research directly addresses critical information gaps, particularly considerations for strong and coherent policy design, and the strategic capacities that are required by countries to support their policy action.
