As a health systems researcher, my career has been defined by building research programs that outlast any single project — across twenty years, six institutions, and three continents. My work spans three research programs: Health Workforce, Regulation & Integrated Care, which traces back to my PhD on health practitioner migration and continues today through workforce capacity-building studies, including a national pharmacist migration research program; Health & Aged Care Management, encompassing an aged care partnership network spanning more than 20 organisations across 8 countries and a MENA hub connecting business, law, health and aged care collaboration; and AI4NCD & Digital Health, my newest program, co-designing AI-enabled mental health support for older adults with international partners.

I have secured a prestigious 4-year NHMRC Sidney Sax Early Career Research Fellowship and an Endeavour Fellowship at WHO Geneva and King's College London, and my career-wide investigator income exceeds $1.85M across all roles and career stages. My research has informed WHO guidance, the Disability Royal Commission, and national workforce policy, and carries a field-weighted citation impact 47% above world average, with 59 peer-reviewed publications and 8,459 citations. I lead as Chief Investigator across all three research programs and supervise HDR students within each.

Researcher Highlights

• 3 nationally competitive fellowships: NHMRC Sidney Sax Early Career Research Fellowship, Endeavour Fellowship (WHO Geneva / King's College London), Australia-India Council Fellowship
• 59 peer-reviewed publications, 8,459 citations (Google Scholar), h-index 24 (Scholar) / 18 (Scopus)
• Field-weighted citation impact 47% above world average
• 35 of 59 publications (59%) as first or corresponding author
• 86% of publications in Q1–Q2 journals; 13 papers (22.8%) in the top 10% of journals globally by CiteScore
• Career-wide investigator income exceeds $1.85M; $702,096 secured as Lead Chief Investigator at Flinders since 2022
• Australian Lead for the WHO's first international guidance document on health practitioner regulation
• Leads three transdisciplinary research programs at Flinders: Health Workforce, Regulation & Integrated Care; Health & Aged Care Management; and AI4NCD & Digital Health

Research Leadership and Service

• Lead Editor, Health Care Management Review special issue on transdisciplinary approaches in health and aged care management (2026)
• Lead Editor, Frontiers in Public Health special issue on older adult care across the Asia-Pacific and China (2024)
• Associate Editor, Frontiers in Public Health (2021–2025)
• Editorial Board Member, BMC Health Services Research (2020–2025)
• Panel member, NHMRC Ideas and Investigator Grants
• Past President, Network for Practice Based Research
• Completed more than 300 peer reviews for journals including The Lancet, Medical Journal of Australia, and BMJ
• Mentors early-career researchers from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Philippines, and Kenya
• Guest Editor, Nature Asia (2016–2017)

Health Workforce Policy, Regulation & Planning (Program P1)
Expertise in workforce modelling, scope of practice, regulatory reform, and international health practitioner migration. Serves as Australian Lead on the WHO Health Practitioner Regulation Study, and leads a national pharmacist workforce research program addressing Australia's projected shortfall in pharmacist supply.

Health & Aged Care Systems Management (Program P2)
Focused on aged care system design, integrated care, and equity of access for ageing and culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Leads a partnership network spanning more than 20 organisations across 8 countries, and a MENA hub connecting business, law, health and aged care collaboration.

AI4NCD & Digital Health (Program P3)
Research on AI-enabled decision support and digital mental health interventions for older adults, developed with international partners. The newest of the three research programs, designed to bring intelligent decision-support infrastructure to health systems managing complex, ageing, and culturally diverse populations.

Global Burden of Disease & Population Health (cross-cutting)
Contributor to the international Global Burden of Disease consortium, with high-impact publications in leading medical journals evidencing standing in the world's most cited health data initiative.

Oral Health Equity (cross-cutting)
Foundational research expertise in oral health disparities among immigrant and CALD populations, forming the population base beneath both the workforce and ageing research programs.

Performance Snapshot

• 59 peer-reviewed publications (2015–2026), 8,459 citations, h-index 24 (Google Scholar) / 18 (Scopus)
• Field-weighted citation impact 1.47× — 47% above world average
• 35 of 59 publications (59%) as first or corresponding author
• 32 papers (56%) in Q1 journals; 86% in Q1–Q2 combined
• 13 papers (22.8%) in the top 10% of journals globally by CiteScore

Publications and Citations by Program

Note: cross-cutting themes overlap with, rather than add to, the program totals above — oral health equity work underlies parts of both P1 and P2.

What I Am Interested In

Within P1, I'm interested in how health practitioner regulation and workforce migration data can be turned into predictive workforce planning tools — moving the field from describing shortages to modelling and pre-empting them, as the national pharmacist workforce program aims to do through 2034.

Within P2, my interest is in what integrated aged care looks like for populations current systems weren't designed around — particularly CALD and ageing populations navigating dental, vision, and hearing care that sits largely outside Medicare, and in building durable international partnership infrastructure (the MENA hub, the 20+ organisation network) rather than one-off collaborations.

Within P3, I'm interested in whether AI-enabled decision support can be built with culturally diverse older populations rather than for them — co-design as a methodological commitment, not just a mental-health-chatbot feature.

Across all three, my abiding interest is in transdisciplinary method — combining health services research with population data science, policy analysis, and international comparative methods to answer questions no single discipline can answer alone.

My supervision model places every candidate inside a live, funded research program rather than a standalone project — the research trains the researcher, and the programs grow through the people they train. I supervise with a structured, methodologically rigorous approach: candidates are guided through systematic reviews, mixed-methods design, and collaboration with industry and government partners, while being given the independence and intellectual latitude to develop their own scholarly voice.

I place particular value on finding a realistic pathway into doctoral research for candidates who arrive by an unconventional route — whether that means beginning in a Masters by Research and upgrading to PhD candidature, or drawing on an interdisciplinary background not typically associated with health services research. Feedback is prompt and thoughtful, calibrated to challenge as much as support, and I encourage candidates to engage beyond the thesis itself — presenting at international conferences, publishing during candidature, and building a research profile that outlasts the degree.

Across 15 HDR candidates supervised or mentored — 3 to completion, 2 of whom now hold academic positions of their own — and 7 currently active at Flinders alongside international co-supervision links with King Abdulaziz University and Manipal Academy of Higher Education, I measure supervision success not by thesis completion alone, but by what candidates go on to build afterward.

Completed Supervisions

University of Adelaide / University of Sydney (2015–2024):

• Dr Dandara Haag — University of Adelaide, completed (Mentor). Awarded the Dean's Commendation for Doctoral Thesis Excellence; author of one of the most cited articles in quality-of-life and oral health research.
• Dr Arash Rudman (formerly published as Ghanbarzadegan — same person, name updated) — University of Adelaide / University of Sydney, completed (Mentor). Developed and published an original theory of the dental equity triad during candidature, recognised by the academic community for its novelty. Now Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney.
• Dr Kanchan Marcus — University of Sydney, completed, 2024 (Co-supervisor — first co-supervision). Published 4 peer-reviewed papers during candidature and a 5th after completion, including a systematic review on CALD populations and oral health ranked a top-3 cited article in Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology (2023); work gained international attention through academic blogs. Now Senior Research Officer, University of Sydney.
• Ms Marcella Coiera — University of Sydney, completed (Co-supervisor, Year 1 and 2). Undertook candidature on a Chilean Government Scholarship.
• Dr Lakshmi Balraj — Maastricht University, completed (role not yet specified). Won the Women Research Leaders Award from the International Association for Dental Research.

Note on Dandara and Arash: both are explicitly Mentor relationships, not formal Principal/Co-supervisor roles — distinct from Kanchan (Co-supervisor) and Marcella (Co-supervisor, Years 1–2). 

Current (Flinders, 2022 onwards)

• Salim Alshehri (P1) — Saudi Government Scholarship recipient; published in a top-10% Q1 journal during candidature.
• Samah Sallam (P3) — Saudi Government Scholarship recipient; has published a paper on her Clinical Decision Support Systems research, extending into a national implementation study in Australia.
• Hongmei Xie (P2/P3) — presented a rapid review paper at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting.
• Sharmin Sultana (P3) — situated within a funded research project, conducting a mixed-methods (qual-quant) study on AI chatbots and mental health.