Professor and Head of Public Health: Professor Paul Ward

Paul is a social scientist with a background in medical sociology, geography and health services research. Paul’s main research interests are around socio-spatial inequalities and inequities in health, medicine usage and the provision of health and social care. Paul also has a particular interest in research around lay and professional perceptions, knowledge and understandings of health, healthcare, medicines, risk and trust.

Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor: Professor Fran Baum

Fran is a Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Director of the Southgate Institute of Health, Society and Equity at Flinders University. She was named in the Queen’s Birthday 2016 Honours List as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to higher education as an academic and public health researcher, as an advocate for improved access to community health care, and to professional organisations”. Professor Baum is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and one of Australia's leading researchers on the social and economic determinants of health. In 2008 she was awarded a prestigious Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship focusing on development of effective government and community responses to social determinants of health inequity and social exclusion. She holds several other national competitive grants investigating aspects of health inequity, and has an extensive teaching career in public health.

Associate Professor in Health Economics: Associate Professor Hossein Afzali

I have a background in medicine (MD) and obtained my PhD in health economics from the University of Adelaide. My main area of expertise relates to the economic evaluation of new health technologies with a focus on the application of decision analytic models aiming to improve models of clinical care in the primary care setting and the decision-making process around the public funding of health care interventions. In terms of applied economic evaluations, my major research activity is the design, conduct and analysis of economic evaluations alongside observational studies and clinical trials. This also includes the application of decision analytic models to extrapolate the findings beyond the observed data in order to estimate lifetime costs and outcome of new health technologies. The main focus of my methodological research is on the improvements in the decision-making process with a view to better inform public funding decisions. Examples include the development of diseases-specific models, model structuring (including structural uncertainty) and the estimate of the cost-effectiveness threshold in Australia.