Board Profiles

Executive Dean, Faculty of Health
University of Canberra

Professor Michelle Lincoln is the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health, the University of Canberra. In this senior role she is engaged in all aspects of the leadership of the Faculty. Michelle is focused on promoting the role and impact of health and sport professionals on the lives of clients, patients and communities. Her second focus is on the preparation of the future allied health, nursing, midwifery, public health and sport workforce. This is reflected in both her leadership of the Faculty and her research.

Michelle writes and researches in the areas of allied health service delivery and workforce particularly in rural, remote and Indigenous communities. Her research has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council and the NSW Government. She has published more than a hundred and thirty peer reviewed journal papers many about student learning on clinical placements.

Michelle has won university and national teaching awards for her educational expertise in Speech Pathology. She is a Fellow of Speech Pathology Australia and a Principle Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Head of School
School of Primary Allied Health Care
Monash University, Victoria

Professor Terry Haines is Head of the School of Primary and Allied Health Care at Monash University. In this role he is responsible for a school with 6 departments, over 150 staff, and over 180 research higher degree students.

He has a professional background in physiotherapy and health economics, and has worked in research roles imbedded within health services for over 15 years before commencing as the Head of School in 2017. He has previously worked for Eastern Health, the University of Queensland, the Princess Alexandra Hospital, and Monash Health.

His primary research interest is in improving the allocation of health care resources to better meet emerging community needs and reducing waste. He currently leads the NHMRC funded EviTAH project, which is focused on identifying the most effective and efficient ways of translating research evidence into practice. This work builds on recent collaborative work with the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services developing the online Resource Allocation Decision Tool, designed to assist health service managers to incorporate research evidence into a broader decision making framework.

Professor Haines’s research has led to several advances in health outcomes. Notable examples include:

• Leading the world’s first trial to demonstrate that falls amongst hospitalised adults could be prevented.
• Developing a patient education program that led to a 50% reduction in falls and fall injuries when rolled out in a randomised trial amongst geriatric rehabilitation units in Western Australia.
• Collaborating with allied health working in oncology services to develop a video-based exercise program that improved the health-related quality of life in women following treatment for breast cancer, and a telephone-based dietetic counselling intervention that improved nutrition and survival outcomes in people with upper gastrointestinal cancer.

He has also contributed to advances in research methodology. Notable examples include:

• Development of a new randomised controlled trial research design for the context of disinvestment from a routinely provided service that has a relative absence of evidence examining its effectiveness or economic efficiency.
• Development of a new statistical analysis approach for the evaluation of screening tool predictive accuracy where the outcome of interest is a recurrent event.
• Identifying design-related bias in evaluations of screening tools that lead to a 20% overestimation of the accuracy individual tools.

He has received over $18 million in research funding, published over 230 peer-reviewed manuscripts including papers in journals the calibre of The Lancet, BMJ, JAMA Internal Medicine, PLoS Medicine, and BMC Medicine.  He has supervised 16 PhD, 1 DPsych, and 1 Research Masters student through to completion. He has twice been awarded the NHMRC Excellence Award and has received the SACS Consulting Award for leadership in the Victorian State Government Sector. He has previously served as President of the Australia New Zealand Falls Prevention Society, Chair of the Australian Physiotherapy Association – Physiotherapy Research Foundation Grant Review Committee, and convenor of the inaugural Victorian Allied Health Research Conference (2014) and convenor of the Australia New Zealand Falls Prevention Conference (2016).

Dean: Academic and Clinical Education
Division of Health Sciences
University of South Australia (UniSA), South Australia

Esther May’s role as Dean: Academic and Clinical Education has a strategic focus on the student experience and quality of teaching and learning in the context of the future healthcare workforce, clinical education, equity and excellence and partnerships.

Originally trained as an occupational therapist, Esther obtained a PhD in medical sciences from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) in 1992. Since then, she has been an active educator and researcher with achievements that include 18 PhD and Masters by Research student completions. Esther has been the Australian delegate to the World Federation of Occupational Therapists and is an honorary and founding member of the Australian Hand Therapy Association.

Esther has a keen interest in health workforce matters and the role of education in producing the health workforce of the future. She oversees government funded grants which target improved clinical training, simulated learning and clinical supervision. Her portfolio includes the UniSA Department of Rural Health (DRH), which oversees rural placements and education for students outside metro Adelaide.

Esther’s experience in management and leadership is extensive, including seven years leading the UniSA School of Health Sciences, and before that seven years leading the School of Occupational Therapy. She is currently a member of the Australian Collaborative Education Network and has been an executive member of the Australian Council of Deans of Health Sciences since 2011.

Academic Director and Dean
Health Partnerships at the University of Southern Queensland

Professor Marion Gray completed a Bachelor of Occupational Therapy in New Zealand and practiced as a therapist. Later returning to study and completing a Masters in Health Sciences, focused on ethics and cultural safety, then a PhD in Public Heath on prostate cancer diagnosis and prevalence. Followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship examining environmental epidemiology in Washington DC with the US Department of Defense. She also completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching.

Marion has over 25 years of experience in teaching and in research using both qualitative and quantitative methods. She has worked as a teaching/research academic and held various leadership positions at Australian Universities since 2005.

Her research interests include teaching, health service and clinical research with a particular focus on low resource settings, overseas and in Australia.  Marion has won two national teaching awards for her teaching innovations in allied health.

Marion currently holds the position of Academic Director and Dean – Health Partnerships at the University of Southern Queensland.

Dean, Science and Health
Professor of Health Science
Lead Dean, Workforce Development
Western Sydney University (WSU), New South Wales

Prior to joining WSU in 2006, Gregory Kolt was Associate Dean (Research), Professor of Health Science, and Founder and Director of the Centre for Physical Activity and Nutrition Research in the Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.

Gregory has an academic background that spans several disciplines, including physiotherapy, psychology, sport and exercise science, and education. He holds a PhD in Psychology, and has worked extensively in psychology and physiotherapy in academic, research, and practice settings in Australia and New Zealand. His research is recognised internationally. He has been successful in securing $5.65 million in research grant funding, and has published several books and book chapters, and around 150 journal publications. He is a recognised senior academic leader and manager with extensive experience in university settings, including achievements in significant change processes. His leadership across the broad science, human science, and health science disciplines has led to the significant expansion, growth, and strengthening of these areas in his current role at WSU, and in his prior role in Auckland.

Shaun is the Executive Director of ACDHS Ltd.  He has had extensive management and non-executive director experience working in higher education, health and member organisations.  He has broad experience with advocacy and stakeholder engagement including extensive work on the NDIS.

Shaun holds qualifications from the AICD, a Masters of Commercial Law and a Masters of Marketing.  Shaun’s endeavour is to maintain and further develop the strong relationships with all key internal and external stakeholders to ACDHS.