Research Capacity Building Program
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Biographies MB ChB, FRNZCGP, FRACGP, PhD
Marjan is a Professor of General Practice at the School of General Practice, Rural, and Indigenous Health in
ANU Medical School, and a Senior Specialist with ACT Health. He is a general practitioner by clinical discipline
and has also held academic appointments with the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and the University of Otago,
New Zealand. He has developed and managed two general practices in New Zealand. Marjan has had a long history of
balancing academic work with clinical general practice.
Program Coordinator Dr Kathryn Dwan is a sociologist. As the Research Manager of the Academic Unit of General Practice
and Community Health, ANU Medical School, she supports the development of research and researchers within
the primary health care sector. She is also a chief investigator, along with two general practitioners,
on the national, 3 year, Australian General Practice Nurse Study, which is due to finish in July 2008.
MB BS Adl, FRACGP, MPH Syd, PhD Ncle NSW Professor Zwar has substantial research experience in the areas of quality use of medications, educational program evaluation and health systems research on chronic illness. In the early 1990’s Dr Zwar conducted research for a Masters of Public health on evaluating group educational programs to improve general practice prescribing of antibiotics and benzodiazepines. Subsequently for his PhD project, he went on to investigate practitioner feedback and management guidelines as a means of improving antibiotic prescribing and academic detailing as a means of improving benzodiazepine prescribing. Professor Zwar has since conducted a five year follow up study of the GPs who received the antibiotic prescribing intervention to examine for persistence of outcomes of the educational program. This work in the area of quality use of medicines and educational evaluation has been the subject of seven publications in refereed journals. More recently he has been involved in a series of projects looking at health systems to support care of chronic illness. This includes projects on evaluation of the Enhanced Primary Care Package resulting in four publications. Currently Professor Zwar has an NHMRC project grant looking at outcomes of multidisciplinary care plans for patients with diabetes. He also has a strong interest in tobacco control and has extensive educational experience in training GPs and other health professionals on brief interventions to assist smokers to quite. His research on bupropion slow release has had policy implications and has been of interest to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee. He is lead author of clinical practice guidelines for general practitioner on smoking cessation. These guidelines are due for dissemination in June 2004.
Program Coordinator
BA Hons, Dip Ed, MBBS, Dip Soc Sci, FRACGP, PhD Dimity is Head of the Discipline of General Practice at the University of Newcastle and a part-time general practitioner. Her research and teaching interests focus on general practice and disadvantaged groups in general practice. She has an extensive track record in researching the interface between general practice and the elderly. In 1999 she was awarded funding to research the health effects of unemployment and to design a brief intervention for GPs to use with unemployed people. She also has a broader interest in health promotion and health service integration involving GPs and has been on the Management Committee of the Linked Care Co-ordinated Care Trial since its inception. Dimity has spent much of the last five years teaching undergraduates general practice skills, including consulting skills, the management of undifferentiated illness and multi-system illness, communication skills, and ethics. She had previously been a GP supervisor for participants in the Family Medicine Program, and still teaches some sessions to GP registrars in the General Practice Training Program. She is also an examiner for the RACGP Fellowship examinations and has been Chair of the Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Division of General Practice. Dimity is a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and a member of the Australian Association of Academic General Practice.
BSc (Geography) (Hons) Susan received her Bachelor of Science (Geography) (Hons) from the University of New South Wales in 1998 and took up a research assistant role with the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) in Canberra. During her 2 years at the AIC she worked in the Drugs-Crime Team conducting research to inform policy. In 2001 Susan accepted a position as a Project Officer at the Discipline of General Practice, University of Newcastle. Her initial work at the Discipline involved researching the health effects of unemployment and redundancy. Susan has subsequently been involved in the evaluation of several General Practice based interventions including a multidisciplinary intervention to manage hyperlipidemia. Her research and project management experience was furthered when she fulfilled the role of the NSW Trial Coordinator for the Women's Internal Study of long Duration Oestrogen after Menopause (WISDOM). More recently Susan has been involved in designing, implementing and evaluating a new model of primary health care at a Clinic in the Hunter Valley. Susan has been involved with the Newcastle PHRED Program (known as CAPRE-Capacity in Research and Evaluation) for 3 years, initially as the Network Coordinator and now as the Program Coordinator.
Associate Professor Jeff Fuller PhD, MSc, GCPopHlth, BN, RPN, RN Jeff was trained as a mental health and community health nurse. He has worked for over 20 years in multidisciplinary public health settings, including as a manager in community health services and for over the last 10 years in university posts (now at the Northern Rivers University Department of Rural Health, University of Sydney). His research interests are in rural mental health, Indigenous and cross cultural health servicing and public health program planning using both quantitative and qualitative methods. His theoretical orientations (formed through his MSc & PhD) are within primary health care, public health nursing and sociology.
Program Coordinator
MBBS (UNSW), PhD, FAFPHM David is Professor of Rural Health and Head of the Department of Rural Health in Broken Hill. As an epidemiologist and public health physician David has a particular interest in rural and indigenous health. He was a medical epidemiologist with NSW Health for five years and has been involved with a range of clinical and public health policies and programs. His research has been published in several scientific journals.
BA (Biology) (Hons), Grad Cert Pop Health Research Methods Frances received her Bachelor of Arts (Biology) (Hons) from Flinders University of South Australia in 1982 and followed this up more recently with a Graduate Certificate in Population Health Research Methods from the University of Sydney in 2002. Frances has a strong interest in all areas of environmental research, having spent ten years working in range-land ecology. Over the past nine years Frances has focussed her research and evaluation work on lead-health issues, the results of which have recently been published in the Journal of Range Management and the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health.
PhD, MSc, BSc, DipAppSci (MedRad), FIR A/Prof Tony Smith is a diagnostic radiographer with over 30 years of clinical experience, having worked in the public and private health care systems in both metropolitan and rural areas in NSW. Prior to taking up his current position he was senior lecturer in Medical Radiation Science with the University of Newcastle and prior to that Head of Medical Radiation Science in Newcastle. In his current position he also heads the PHCRED program at the Northern NSW UDRH & RCS. In addition to extensive teaching experience, Dr Smith has been involved in research in medical radiation dosimeter and medical imaging in low back pain in the past. His main research interests are now in health workforce issues, particularly those related to inter professional rural clinical practice in medical imaging. He is the coordinator of the NSW remote x-ray operators licensing course, which aims to educate and provide support to nurse and GPs who perform radiography in locations where no radiographer is available. He also maintains a strong research interest in other areas of rural and remote clinical practice and in allied health workforce profiling.
The NSW Primary Health Care Research Capacity Building Program is funded
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