Fourteen Lightning Talk presentations have been selected for the 5th Rural and Remote Health Scientific Symposium program.
Lightning Talks are a great opportunity for speakers to present their rural and remote health research findings in a short, concise five-minute presentation. The talks will be used to generate inspiration, discussion and participation in later sessions at the Symposium. The short timeframe is designed to keep delegates focused and excited!
Dr Lara Bishop is the Research and Policy Manager for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. She recently completed a discussion paper that explored injuries sustained by remote and rural Australians, and compared these to those living in major cities. She is currently conducting research around the disparities in health outcomes for remote and rural Indigenous Australians across a range of illnesses and injuries, such as respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease, skin diseases etc. Lara is also a visiting fellow at Murdoch Children's Research Institute, where she is involved in research investigating the health literacy of parents of 0-2 year olds, as part of the right@home randomised controlled trial of sustained nurse home visiting, being conducted in Victoria and Tasmania.
Blair Burke is a bubbly, final-year medical student at the Australian National University with a passion for the outdoors, travel and rural health! She has recently accepted an internship at Tamworth Rural Referral Hospital and has completed rural placements in Goulburn, Crookwell and Vanuatu. This year she has the privilege of being the Medical Officer for the National Rural Health Students Network (NRHSN). NRHSN represents the future of rural health in Australia. It has more than 9,000 members who belong to 28 university Rural Health Clubs from all states and territories. It is Australia’s only multidisciplinary student health network, bringing together people studying medicine, nursing and allied health, encouraging them to pursue rural health careers. The NRHSN has two aims: 1. To provide a voice for students who are interested in improving health outcomes for rural and remote Australians. 2. To promote rural health careers to students and encourage students who are interested in practising in rural health care. #gorural
Associate Professor Sheree Cairney is a cognitive neuroscientist who has worked in remote communities in Australia investigating the impact drugs, alcohol and petrol sniffing have on the brain. The results of her research into petrol sniffing has led to ground-breaking clinical evidence that the brain can repair itself if the substance abuse stops early enough. She has established culturally relevant assessments of ‘mental health/wellbeing’ and brain function among Aboriginal people. Her research has been translated into interactive multimedia tools that communicate health promotion and education messages to diverse demographics. These include the 'Brain Stories' suite of flipcharts and animations and the highly successful ‘No Smokes’ education campaign. Currently, she is leading a national longitudinal study ‘The Interplay project’ that investigates the key conditions and drivers for improved health and wellbeing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across Australia. Sheree is passionate about using knowledge, innovation and empowerment strategies to create change in policy, culture and humanity. She is an Associate Professor at Flinders University and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Remote Health, Alice Springs.
Colleen Cheek worked as a registered nurse for over 15 years, in primary, secondary and tertiary public and private organisations in New Zealand, England and Australia, predominantly in perioperative nursing. She completed a Bachelor of Science with Massey University in New Zealand, a Masters of Information Systems with University of Tasmania, and is currently a PhD candidate with the UTas School of Medicine. Having lived most of her life in country towns and cities in New Zealand and Australia, as a research fellow with the UTas Rural Clinical School Colleen combines her love and lived experience of rural life with research to promote better health outcomes for rural people, at community, practitioner and health service level.
Dr Kristen Glenister is a Research Fellow in Rural Chronic Ill Health for the University of Melbourne’s Department of Rural Health. Kristen is based in Wangaratta, but works in a team located throughout northern-north eastern Victoria. Her research interests include chronic ill health in rural Victoria (including obesity), access to care and the patient journey. Kristen is one of the six chief investigators for the project entitled ‘Longitudinal study of health, disease and access to care in rural Victoria: the Crossroads follow up study’, which has recently secured over one million dollars of funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council in partnership with small rural health services.
Diana Godwin completed undergraduate degrees with the University of Tasmania and has an extensive background in clinical dentistry. She joined the Centre for Rural Health in 2012 to work towards her PhD as a graduate research student with the Centre for Research Excellence in Primary Oral Health Care. Diana’s thesis topic is investigating the attitudes, opinions, and barriers of Australian dental practitioners towards living and working in rural areas. This research focuses on the motivational factors of work/life balance that influence an individual’s rural work choices, such as location, length of employment and reasons to leave. Diana has worked in clinical dentistry for many years, in both the private and the public sector, in Tasmania and Victoria. Rural people have poorer oral health than metropolitan populations; this is thought to be in part due to problems associated with access and a maldistribution of the oral health workforce away from rural areas towards population centres. This work was inspired by the disparities of oral health outcomes faced by disadvantaged rural populations in Australia. Her areas of research stem from her clinical background, and she has developed a keen interest in the provision of efficient and sustainable oral health services in Australia.
Dr Glen Hughes has worked as a dentist with Indigenous communities in SA, NT, Qld and NSW for the past 20 years. He has a Masters in International Health and a Bachelor of Dental Surgery with Honours. He is currently working on a DPhil at Sydney University, investigating the normalisation of poor oral health in disadvantaged communities. Glen is a passionate advocate for oral health and has contributed to national oral health policy. He is convinced that until the nation changes policy to allow disadvantaged Australians access to comprehensive oral health care, disparities between the advantaged and disadvantaged will continue to widen and have long-term health and social consequences.
Prof Scott Kitchener is the Clinical Sub Dean in Rural Health at Griffith University, leading the Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training Program for Griffith Health in rural Queensland. Part of this role includes supervising research in the Rural and Agricultural Health Research Centre within the program, which generates research projects of relevance to the Darling Downs for students to participate in as clinical investigators. One such project has been to define the agricultural injuries presenting to the rural hospitals on the Darling Downs. Prof Kitchener is in clinical and public health practice in Clifton on the Darling Downs.
Dr Christina Malatzky is a Research Fellow in Culture and Rural Health at The University of Melbourne. She is also the Graduate Research Coordinator at the Department of Rural Health and a member of the Executive Committee of Australia’s national peak association for sociologists, The Australian Sociological Association. Her background is in gender relations and discourses of contemporary femininities and maternities. Her work draws on Foucauldian feminist frameworks to analyse movements of power and discourse to explore the formation of subjectivities. Her current research interests include discourses of rural health, power relations in rural health, the cultures of rural health services, inclusive health care practice and gender relations in rural medicine and health care systems.
Rod Menere is a Registered Nurse whose postgraduate studies were in primary health care. His career has included considerable work in remote area nursing, international development, acute community mental health and OHS. Rod is currently employed as the Professional Officer for the CRANAplus National Safety and Security Project.
Dr Elizabeth Neale is an Accredited Practising Dietitian. She completed her PhD in nutrition at the University of Wollongong in 2012. Elizabeth was a director at Landmark Nutrition, a nutrition consulting company from 2012 to 2016, and currently works as a Research Fellow at the Smart Foods Centre, University of Wollongong, where her role focuses on analysis of data and management of student projects associated with the HealthTrack study. Elizabeth’s research interests include the evidence-based framework, particularly systematic literature reviews, the health effects of foods such as fish and nuts, and food composition databases.
Dr Belinda O’Sullivan gained her PhD in 2016, for a thesis about rural outreach by specialist doctors in Australia. She now works as a Research Fellow at the Monash School of Rural Health.
She is an active member of the MABEL research team (a large longitudinal panel survey of Australian doctors), and leads an integrated program of research tracking the influence of rural medical training at Monash University.
Her main research interest is improving population health in rural and remote areas, particularly through developing the rural health workforce via supply and retention and considering innovative health service models.
Dr O’Sullivan is located at Monash Rural Health, Bendigo, Victoria. She came to Monash with over ten years' experience in health workforce training and development, program implementation and evaluation and policy experience.
She is a graduate of the NSW Public Health Officer Training Program at NSW Health.
People living in remote, rural and regional areas have poorer access to health care and worse health outcomes than their urban counterparts, with increasing remoteness generally associated with greater health inequity. Different communities have varying health needs, however there is a lack of detailed analytical tools that assist us understand which communities have the greatest health needs overall. In response to this, Health Workforce Queensland undertook a ‘Priority Communities’ project to develop a multidimensional and robust tool to compare and measure health needs between remote and rural Queensland communities.
An evidence-based methodology generated baseline data for each town using components identified as key health need drivers: demographics, medical workforce and remoteness. Key health drivers were given weightings and applied to each town to reflect differential need. Towns were further stratified using a ‘GP per weighted population’ ratio. Following this, a ‘multi criteria decision analysis’ matrix step was undertaken per town, comprising several measures of health service access to further disaggregate and rank the priority group.
We will provide a snapshot of the tool and how it can be adapted to assist rural and remote organisations direct their service delivery according to health and workforce ‘need’ at a community level.
Daniel Terry, BN MntlHlth PhD RN, completed his PhD in 2014, which focused on the acculturation and retention of international medical graduates in rural and remote contexts.
He has a background in Nursing and a Masters of International Health. He is a research fellow for The University of Melbourne and has worked as a research assistant for the University of Tasmania and Deakin University. He has an interest in critical discourse analysis, and has been involved in many projects concerning the health and wellbeing of rural migrant communities. He is currently undertaking a number of research projects related to chronic ill health and the rural health workforce.