June – July 2025 Highlights
Congratulations to the Premier’s Health and Medical Research Awards finalist, Dr Simone McCarthy
Dr Simone McCarthy, an Executive Dean’s Research Fellow in the Institute for Health Transformation, was a runner up in the Public Health Stream of the Premier’s Health & Medical Research Award’s 30th anniversary, held on 23 June. Her research focuses on the Commercial Determinants of Health, with a particular emphasis on gendered impacts. Dr McCarthy’s PhD examined the experiences of Australian women affected by gambling-related harm—an important contribution to recognising and responding to the unique vulnerabilities faced by women in this context.
Pictured: Dr Simone McCarthy receiving her finalist award from the Premier of Victoria, the Hon Jacinta Allan MP. Picture right: Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, Dr Simone McCarthy, the Hon Jacinta Allan MP, Professor Trish Livingston and the Hon Danny Pearson MP, Minister for Economic Growth & Jobs, and Minister for Finance.
Celebrating our recent graduates
Congratulations to the following mid year graduates:
Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Research
- Melissa Blake: ‘Influences on Mothers When Breastmilk-Feeding a Late Preterm Infant.’
Principal supervisor: Deakin Distinguished Professor Alison Hutchinson - Laura Brooks: ‘Culturally Sensitive End-of-Life Communication in Intensive Care.’
Principal supervisor: Professor Elizabeth Manias
Laura was awarded a Faculty of Health Outstanding Thesis Award, an honour given to only four Faculty of Health PhD graduates per year (less than 4% of all completed candidates) - Kath Brundell: ‘Operational Sustainability in Rural Victorian Maternity Care: A Mixed-Methods Study.’
Principal supervisor: Professor Linda Sweet - Madeline Hawke: ‘Shared Decision-Making With Pregnant Women With High Body Mass Index.’
Principal supervisor: Deakin Distinguished Professor Julie Considine AO - Apinya Koontalay: ‘Co-Design of a Thai-Based Heart Failure Program to Improve Patient Outcomes.’
Co-supervisors: Professor Anastasia Hutchinson and Professor Mari Botti.
Deakin Health Economics
- Utsana Tonmukayakul: “Preference-based quality of life measurement in children with cerebral palsy,” makes a valuable contribution to the field of health economics and child health.
Co-supervisors: Professor Suzanne Robinson, Professor Cathy Mihalopoulos, Professor Rob Carter, Professor Dinah Reddihough, Professor Gang Chen and Associate Professor Brendan Mulhern.
Pictured left: Kath Brundell, Apinya Koontalay, Madeline Hawke, Laura Brooks and Melissa Blake. Right: Prof Cathy Mihalopoulos (Monash University), Prof Suzanne Robinson, Prof Dinah Reddihough (MCRI), Utsana Tonmukayakul and Prof Catherine Bennett.
Pictured left: Sally Schultz, Christina Zorbas, Rebecca Bennett, Kath Backholer. Right: Grace Arnot
Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition (GLOBE)
- Rebecca Bennett: ‘The digital food retail environment and population health.’
Principal supervisor: Professor Kath Backholer, Associate supervisors: Professor Gary Sacks, Dr Christina Zorbas - Sally Schultz: ‘Strengthening equity in government policies and programs.”
Principal supervisor: Professor Kath Backholer, Associate supervisors: Professor Anna Peeters, Dr Christina Zorbas.
Determinants of Health
- Grace Arnot: ‘Youth Engagement in Public Health Responses to the Commercial and Political Determinants of the Climate Crisis.’
Principal Supervisor: Professor Samantha Thomas, Associate supervisors: Dr Hannah Pitt, Dr Simone McCarthy and Dr Elyse Warner.
Congratulations to:
- Prof Angela Dew, Dr Kim Robinson, Mr Andrew Brown, Ms Kaye Graves, Sarah Tarquinio, Mr Nido Taveesupmai, Mr Zahir Azimi, Ms Stephanie Flynn, Ms Tamara Davis, Ms Si Blut Soe, Ms Paw Htoo May, Mr Masooma Mohammad Naeem were awarded a $59,014 National Disability Research Partnership grant for their study titled Co-designing research to build regional capacity for culturally safe access to supports and services for people with disability from refugee communities.
- The 2025 Edition of our Ranking of Best Scientists in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities has been released, and. of the 451 top ‘social sciences & humanities’ researchers in Aus, IHT has 6 (35%) of Deakin’s 17: incl Gary Sacks; Tony LaMontagne; Steve Allender; & Samantha Thomas.
- DHE researchers Tan Nguyen was awarded the Bastas Academy for Health Leadership Scholarship and Judith Albino received the Award for Outstanding Research in Health Equity.
- The Australian Centre for Behavioural Research in Diabetes (ACBRD) is leading the Global Summit to End Diabetes Stigma, Mar 28, 2026 , Jaipur, India
- Diabetes Victoria and Deakin University renewed their Collaboration Agreement to support the The Australian Centre for Behavioural Research in Diabetes (ACBRD) from July 2025 to January 2030.
- Professor Rochelle Wynne, Chair of Nursing (Western Health Partnership), an author on a publication in the Nature Review Cardiology journal, with a high impact factor, “Sex-based equity in cardiovascular trials: strategies for delivery”
- Professor Linda Sweet has been acknowledged as third top midwifery research in the global Highly Ranked Scholars 2024 by ScholarGPS
- Associate Professor Louise Alexander was appointed as the Inaugural Associate Professor in Mental Health Nursing (Alfred Health)
- Dr Paula Medway was awarded an Australian Nurses Memorial Centre Scholarship for $10,000 to support her PhD, titled ‘Policy to Practice: Exploring the Implementation and Impact of Australia’s National Maternity Strategy’.
- Professor Anna Ugalde and the ECORRA Research Group (Equitable Cancer Outcomes across Rural and Remote Australia) have commenced a new partnership with Cancer Australia, Australia’s peak government agency in cancer control.
- Dr Emily Tomlinson, Dr Monica Schoch, A/Prof Jo McDonall, Prof Rochelle Wynne have been awarded $5,000 as part of the University’s FutureFocus GenAI Program for a project titled “AI in Healthcare: Shaping Future Nursing and Midwifery Education”
- The Health Consumers Centre is pleased to welcome the follow new members to their team:
Sonia Schinck has joined us as a social work Masters placement student. Sonia will work with us for three days a week for the remainder of the year. Sonia’s usual days will be Wed-Fri as she is a primary school teacher and teaches on Mondays and Tuesdays. Sonia has been teaching for 20 years and is very passionate and excited about this placement. Sonia will work on a project mapping health condition-specific and population-specific agencies across Victoria through a combination of desktop review and consultation activities with one or more geographic areas or communities of interest. In addition to the project focus, Sonia will be available to extend the capacity of our team whilst learning about engagement practice. We look forward to working with and providing meaningful learning opportunities for Sonia over the coming months.I am also very excited to share that Joanna Szczepańska will be joining our team on 4th August as our Manager, Innovation and Service Development (full time). Jo has broad and deep expertise in co-design, consumer and community engagement practice as well as in consultancy, thought leadership, systems/operations innovation and design and in training. She is a highly recognised leader in the field with great passion for enabling meaningful engagement and we are very excited that Joanna wants to work with us! She will bring highly developed stakeholder engagement and problem solving skills and a strong interest in finding innovative solutions to automate and create flow to free up resources to focus on the value-laden work that we care about most. Jo will work closely with Julian Toscano who has recently joined Amy Antonio’s team to grow and diversify our business model, our service offerings and our funding base.We are very pleased to announce that Jess Franks has joined our Health Consumers Centre team as Consultant, Co-design and Engagement. Jess’ role is one of eight jointly funded roles that are embedded across Deakin and Western Victoria Primary Health Network as part of the partnership. We are very excited to welcome Jess to our Centre team and for the opportunities to strengthen our links with WVPHN and for the joint learning and development that this opportunity brings.
Recent Conference presentations
- Deakin Distinguished Professor Tracey Bucknall presented “Co-creation and value in an Australian partnership network to improve patient safety” at the International Healthcare Ergonomics and Patient Safety (HEPS) conference in Dublin, Ireland. Partnership meeting with Evidence-based QUality Improvement and Patient Safety (EQUIPS) research network on linkage to QPS.
- Deakin Distinguished Professor Catherine Bennett and the independent experts appointed by Melbourne Airport to develop draft Terms or Reference for a 20 year Community Health Study were invited by the Dept of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sports and the Arts, to deliver a 90min symposium on health and major infrastructure development, including the move from health protection to health promotion in the planning and delivery of infrastructure. Read more about the Melbourne Airport Third Runway TOR project.
Go back to the August 25 Newsletter
