Honorary Staff
Professorial Fellows
Professor Jim Buchan
Professor Buchan is a Professor of Health Economics at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. He has over twenty years experience of practice, consultancy and policy research in health care human resources, including policy advice on the HR implications of health sector reorganisation and healthcare reform; incentives and reward strategy; workforce planning; employment relations and the role of professional associations; health worker migration; regulation of health professionals; performance management, labour market analysis; and skill mix and developing extended roles. Professor Buchan has a background as senior HR manager at national level in UK National Health Service, and as HR policy analyst, having worked on secondment as HRH specialist at the World Health Organisation, Geneva, 2000-2001. As a consultant and adviser to World Bank, WHO, ILO, OECD, ICN, Professor Buchan has worked in Africa, Central and South Asia, Australasia, Caribbean, Central and Latin America, Western Pacific, Eastern Europe and most countries of the European Union. He also has extensive experience as an invited speaker at national and international conferences on HR issues in health sector.
Professor Connelly (BA (Econ) MEconSt, PhD) is the Director of the Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health (ACERH) and an Associate Director of the Centre of National Research on Disability and Rehabilitation Medicine (CONROD) in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. Professor Connelly earned his PhD in economics from The University of Queensland in 1999 for a dissertation on general practitioner (GP) markets in Australia, in which he modelled the demand and supply of GP services, producer location decisions and health production, as well as the economic strategies of medical firms under the Medicare arrangements. His research interests include the economics of health insurance and health care financing, the markets for health care services, and the relationships between incentives and behaviour in the health sector. He earned his PhD in economics from The University of Queensland in 1999 for a dissertation on general practitioner markets in Australia, in which he modelled the demand and supply of general practitioner (GP) services, producer location decisions and health production, as well as the economic strategies of medical firms under the Medicare arrangements. He is the author of a book (with Doessel), published in 2002, entitled Medicare and General Practice: An Economic Analysis. This work is germane to Australian health workforce policy. Professor Connelly’s recent papers include articles published in journals such as Health Economics, European Journal of Health Economics, International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics, Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance, Controlled Clinical Trials and Accident Analysis and Prevention, and a number of medical journals.
Professor Lesleyanne Hawthorne
Professor Hawthorne (BA Monash, GDipEd Monash, MA Melbourne, PhD Monash) is Associate Dean (International) at the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Professor Hawthorne has researched global skill migration for the past 20 years, in particular policy, accreditation and labour market integration issues. Most recently she has been appointed by the OECD to conduct research related to high skill migration across 30 member nations (2007-08), including health workforce supply. Professor Hawthorne has extensive experience assessing health professional migration in Canada and has also completed the main Australian studies to date on global mobility in the nursing profession, and accreditation requirements for overseas trained health professionals. Professor Hawthorne has been chosen as the Australia-India Exchange Scholar for 2007-08 by the Australian Academy of Social Sciences (to conduct research concerning the impact of global migration on Indian medical workforce supply); Major publications include Refugee: The Vietnamese Experience (Oxford University Press, 1982 330pp), Making It in Australia (Edward Arnold, 1988 288pp), Labour Market Barriers for Immigrant Engineers in Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, 1994 164pp), Immigrants and the Professions in Australia (Monash University, 1997 88pp, B Birrell & L Hawthorne), Evaluation of the General Skill Migration Category (Commonwealth of Australia, 2006, 306pp, B Birrell, L Hawthorne & S Richardson), The Registration and Training Status of Overseas Trained Doctors in Australia (L Hawthorne, G Hawthorne & B Crotty, 2007, Department of Health and Ageing, 179pp), and Labour Market Outcomes for Migrant Professionals – Canada and Australia Compared (L Hawthorne, 2007, Government of Canada, 164pp).
Professor Massaro (BA, PhD (Monash), Company Directors’ Diploma, FAICD, FAIM, HonFATEM, MACE) has held several senior management positions, including as Chief Executive, in public sector institutions over a period of thirty years and has considerable experience in health workforce issues. His involvement in several positions related to medical, specialist and allied health education (including a period as Chief Executive of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons) has given him a deep understanding of the health industry both in Australia and internationally. He is now the Managing Director of a consulting company specialising in strategic policy, management and planning advice to higher education institutions and governments and to health authorities on medical workforce and education.
Professor Scott is a Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne. He leads the Institute’s research into the economics of health care, and is a member of Centre for Micro-econometrics in the Department of Economics. He is also an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of Population Health at the University of Melbourne and an Honorary Professor in the Health Economics Research Unit at the University of Aberdeen. Tony has a PhD in Economics from the University of Aberdeen and has over 240 publications and presentations, including 58 peer reviewed journal articles, 50 working papers and reports, nine keynote presentations, 53 peer reviewed conference presentations, and 44 invited presentations and seminars. Journal articles span high quality academic and policy-oriented journals in health economics, economics and health services research, including the Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics, Social Science and Medicine, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, British Medical Journal as well as leading primary care journals such as the British Journal of General Practice and Family Practice. He has edited a book, ‘Advances in Health Economics’, and authored a chapter in the Elsevier ‘Handbook of Health Economics’, the leading international reference work in Health Economics.
Dr Schofield’s career has spanned the Australian Government public service, academia and clinical practice and she has a national and international reputation for her work in economic modelling of the health system. She has established the health microsimulation modelling program at the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling. She undertook nation-leading work on modelling the distribution of health expenditure and health expenditure trends and private health insurance. As a result Australia is now seen as the international leader in the application of microsimulation to health. Prof Schofield has provided advice to organisations such as the World Health Organisation, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, Sweden, the National Health Service in the UK and the Associations of the Faculties of Medicine in the UK and Canada. She established Australia’s first model of child care subsidies and their relationship to family earnings and was a developer of STINMOD, a model of income, government benefits and taxation. Over the last 15 years this model has been, and still is, used extensively by major government departments including the Treasury, the opposition for election promises, Cabinet and Budget cabinet, for analysis and costing of major tax-benefit policy changes such as Tax Reform at the time the GST was introduced.
Senior Fellows
Dr Birrell is the Director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research (CPUR) and a Reader in Sociology at Monash University. Dr Birrell has a degree in economics from the University of Melbourne, in history from London University (first class honours) and a PhD in Sociology from Princeton University. Most of his academic work has been at Monash University and since 1991 this work has focussed on running the CPUR. Recently he was a member of the independent Review of the General Skilled Migration Program which reported in May 2006. Bob is currently a member of the Department of Education, Science and Training’s International Education Advisory body. In 2003 Dr Birrell collaborated with Professor Lesleyanne Hawthorne on the Birrell Report: Outlook for Surgical Services in Australasia.
Dr Owen Dent
Dr Dent (BA, MA, ANU, PhD Brown) has an extensive background in social statistics, biostatistics and demography. His major previous experience in medical workforce was managing and reporting on the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) workforce surveys from 1981 to 2003. Dr Dent's publications in the area of health workforce include:
- Dent OF, Goulston KJ., Trends in the specialist workforce in internal medicine in Australia, 1981 to 1995. Med J Aust 1999; 170: 32-35.
- Dent OF., Clinical workforce in internal medicine and paediatrics in Australia 1990. Fellowship Affairs (Roy Aust Coll Phys), 1992;11(2):5 16
- Dent OF., Clinical workforce in internal medicine and paediatrics in New Zealand 1990. Fellowship Affairs (Roy Aust Coll Phys), 1992;11(4):7 11
- Dent OF., Clinical workforce in internal medicine and paediatrics in Australia 1993. Fellowship Affairs (Roy Aust Coll Phys), 1994;13(3);10-21.
Dr Joyce (BA (Hons), M. Psych., PhD) is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of General Practice and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology & Preventive Medicine at Monash University. As a health services researcher whose main field of work is health workforce research, Dr Joyce has developed and implemented a simulation model of future supply of the Australian medical workforce. This work was completed as part of her PhD and subsequently published: Joyce CM, Stoelwinder JU, McNeil JJ. More doctors but not enough: Australian medical workforce supply 2001-2012. Med J Aust 2006, 184: 441-446. Dr Joyce’s empirical research on Australian health workforce supply and participation includes the MABEL study, and the Monash Medical Graduates Survey. Dr Joyce teaches health policy and health systems, and has previously worked in the Department of Health and Ageing (Victorian State Office) as well as the academic sector.
Mr Robert Wells is Director Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Executive Director of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at The Australian National University. He has a broad role to work across the ANU in the areas of health research and policy analysis, including a number of projects in the fields of primary health care and workforce policy. He participates in national committees advising governments on research and medical training. Mr Wells is a former a first assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Ageing where he was involved in research policy, Commonwealth/State relations, health workforce, rural health programs, safety and quality and programs for better management of major diseases such as cancer, diabetes and mental health. Mr Wells managed the Commonwealth's health workforce programs from the early 1990's. He chaired the Medical Training Review Panel and represented the Commonwealth on the Australian Medical Workforce Advisory Committee (AMWAC), the Australian Health Workforce Officials Committee (AHWOC) and the Australian Medical Council (AMC). He has chaired a number of workforce committees established under the auspices of the Australian Health Ministers Council, including working parties on national medical registration and specialist medical training and has represented Australia internationally on medical workforce matters.