Researcher

My Expertise

I work to ensure health services reach everyone. For more than 20 years I have worked with health services, communities and policy makers on four research themes: health impact assessment and healthy public policy; primary health care and integrated care; multicultural health and language equity; and disability, carers and older people. Across all four, my research focuses on equity, is co-produced with people with lived experience, and aims to change what services and governments do. I also teach how health organisations plan, change and act.

Four research themes: health impact assessment and healthy public policy; primary health care and integrated care; multicultural health and language equity; and disability, carers and older people. Three approaches run across all four themes: equity; co-production and lived experience; and implementation and influence.

Keywords

Fields of Research (FoR)

Primary health care, Health services and systems, Public health, Service design, Culture, representation and identity, Health equity, People with disability, Community and primary care

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Biography

Associate Professor Ben Harris-Roxas is an internationally recognised health services researcher and educator. His research is organised around four themes:

  • health impact assessment and healthy public policy;
  • primary health care and integrated care;
  • multicultural health and language equity; and
  • disability, carers and older people.

 

Ben received his PhD from UNSW Sydney on using equity-focused health impact assessment in health service...view more

Associate Professor Ben Harris-Roxas is an internationally recognised health services researcher and educator. His research is organised around four themes:

  • health impact assessment and healthy public policy;
  • primary health care and integrated care;
  • multicultural health and language equity; and
  • disability, carers and older people.

 

Ben received his PhD from UNSW Sydney on using equity-focused health impact assessment in health service planning. He worked across government, health services, and consulting before returning to universities - experience that shaped his commitment to research that changes practice.

Ben joined UNSW School of Population Health in 2021, and has been an investigator on research projects worth over $26 million and published more than 115 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He convenes courses with over 400 postgraduate students enrolled each year and serves as Director of Double Degree Programs in the School of Population Health, which bring together internationally recognised programs in Public Health and Health Management. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Journal of Primary Health and a Board Director of the Council of Academic Public Health Institutions Australasia (CAPHIA).

Ben's previous international leadership has included chairing the International Union for Health Promotion and Education's Global Working Group on Health Impact Assessment and the International Association for Impact Assessment's Global Health Section. He has consulted for the World Health Organization on health impact assessment and intersectoral action for health. Previously, he directed a joint evaluation and research collaboration between South Eastern Sydney Local Health District and UNSW Sydney.

Ben currently supervises PhD, Doctor of Public Health, and Master of Philosophy students.


My Grants

Career grant income up to October 2026
Total funding as an Investigator: $29,307,000
HERDC Category 1: $20.6 million (Competitive peer-reviewed research funding programs)
HERDC Category 2: $5.7 million (Australian government funding)
HERDC Category 3: $3.1 million (International and industry funding)

Total research funding: $26.5 million (68 grants)
Total education and capacity building funding: $2.9 million (5 grants)
Past five years: $22.9 million (27 grants)

Stacked bar chart of research grant income per year by HERDC category from 2005 to 2031, rising from under $0.5 million a year before 2021 to $4.0 million in 2026, with lighter bars for years still to come on grants already awarded.


Funders

  • Australian General Practice Research Foundation
  • Australian Government Department of Health
  • Australian Research Council (ARC)
  • Avant Foundation
  • Cancer Institute NSW
  • Central and Eastern Sydney Primary Health Network
  • Health Research Board (Ireland)
  • Healthy North Coast Primary Health Network
  • Medical Research Future Fund
  • Mental Health Commission of NSW
  • Mindgardens Neuroscience Network
  • National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
  • NSW Health
  • Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP)
  • Sax Institute
  • South Western Sydney Primary Health Network
  • Sydney Partnership for Health Education, Research and Enterprise (SPHERE)
  • The Health Foundation (United Kingdom)
  • The J.O. and J.R. Wicking Trust
  • University of New South Wales (UNSW)
  • World Health Organization (WHO)


Grant reviewer for


My Qualifications

PhD (Public Health, UNSW)
Master of Policy and Applied Social Research (Macquarie)
Bachelor of Social Work (UNSW)


My Awards

  1. UNSW School of Population Health Jan Ritchie Excellence in Higher Degree Research Mentoring Award 2026
  2. UNSW School of Population Health Alan Hodgkinson Teaching Excellence Award 2026
  3. Australasian Association for Academic Primary Care Sustainable Future in Primary Care Research Prize 2026
  4. Australasian College of Health Service Management NSW Branch Leadership Recognition Award 2025
  5. UNSW School of Population Health Alan Hodgkinson Teaching Excellence Award 2024
  6. UNSW School of Population Health Higher Degree Research Supervisor Award 2022
  7. UNSW Faculty of Medicine & Health Research Community Engagement Team Award 2022 for Shisha No Thanks
  8. Honourable Mention, 2021 Scientia Education Academy Exemplary Teaching Award
  9. NSW Premier's Multicultural Communications Awards Business Campaign of the Year for Shisha No Thanks, 2020
  10. South Eastern Sydney Local Health District Health Awards (Keeping People Healthy Category) for Shisha No Thanks, 2020
  11. International Association for Impact Assessment, Institutional Award for NSW HIA Project, 2010
  12. Australian Health Promotion Association Ray James Memorial Award for excellence in health promotion research published in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 2010

My Research Activities

A/Prof Harris-Roxas' research activities focus on primary health care, integrated care, and health impact assessment. His current projects include:

  • Strengthening Emergency Engagement and Communication for Multicultural Communities (SEEC)
  • Community Health workers Extending Care in the Community (CHECC)
  • Shared Health Arrangements Research & Development (SHAReD)
  • Central and Eastern Sydney Primary and Community Health Data Linkage Project (CES-P&CH)
  • Developing a Health Impact Assessment Implementation Model: Enhancing Intersectoral Approaches in Tackling Health Inequalities (HIA-IM)
  • MyMedicare for older adults living in residential aged care homes (MRFF)
  • My Health Choices My Way: health care transitions for young people with intellectual disability (MRFF)
  • A digital health navigator platform for cardiovascular and diabetes care for people with intellectual disability (MRFF)
  • Diagnosis4All: co-designing equitable solutions to reduce the diagnostic odyssey (MRFF)
  • A multidisciplinary model of primary care to minimise unplanned care transitions in older Australians (Australian General Practice Research Foundation and The J.O. and J.R. Wicking Trust)
  • Preventive healthcare for People with Intellectual Disability
  • Shisha No Thanks
  • Improving access to the hearing services program for people from CALD backgrounds

 

Citations

Citations up to October 2026: Google Scholar 3,406 (2,055 since 2021), h-index 30; Scopus 1,642, h-index 23.

Three bar charts on a shared time axis from 2004 to 2031. Peer-reviewed publications per year rise from five or fewer a year before 2021 to 19 in 2025, with 120 in total. Google Scholar citations per year rise from 120 in 2020 to 531 in 2025. Research grant income per year rises from under $0.5 million before 2021 to $4.0 million in 2026, with lighter bars for years still to come on grants already awarded.

 

Five small bar charts of peer-reviewed publications per year by research theme, 2004 to 2026. Health impact assessment and urban health accounts for most papers up to 2015; primary health care, integrated care and care in the community, multicultural health and language, and disability, carers and older people appear from 2018 onwards and make up most papers since 2021.

 

Five small bar charts of peer-reviewed publications per year by research theme, 2004 to 2026. Health impact assessment and urban health accounts for most papers up to 2015; primary health care, integrated care and care in the community, multicultural health and language, and disability, carers and older people appear from 2018 onwards and make up most papers since 2021.


My Research Supervision


Supervision keywords


Areas of supervision

Supervision areas:

  • health impact assessment and healthy public policy;
  • primary health care and integrated care, including equity of access to care;
  • multicultural health and language equity, including work on interpreters and machine translation; and
  • disability, carers and older people, including intellectual disability and rare disease.

 

I'm keen to supervise candidates in any of these areas, especially work that connects lived experience, service delivery, and policy. I try to give higher degree by research candidates room to develop their own ideas while staying grounded in the realities of the systems they're studying.


Currently supervising

Currently supervising:

  • Abdi, Fatemeh - Falls prevention in culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) older adults (PhD)
  • Ali, Rula - The impact of early and longitudinal placement in clinical general practice on UNSW undergraduate medical students’ career choice and perception of general practice (PhD)
  • Choudhry, Uzma - Co-designing a physical activity program for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse (MPhil)
  • Driscoll, Sarah - Evaluation of a HbA1c Prediabetes SMS Notification Pathway (PhD)
  • Green, Jenny - Addressing education gaps amongst healthcare providers regarding long-term health risk after hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (PhD, UTS)
  • Khan, Rabia - Understanding the role of social norms and trust on compliance with public health guidance (PhD)
  • McCue, Peter - Engaging political actors to increase population levels of physical activity (PhD)
  • McGlynn, Anna - Spread and scale of integrated care initiatives (DrPH Future Health Leaders)
  • Nguyen, Paul - Feasibility of Using Retrieval-Augmented Generation to Address Language Barriers in Managing Patients with Abdominal Pain in the Emergency Departments (PhD)
  • Sharma, Sanjeev - Health Equity and Artificial Intelligence: A Qualitative Study of Nepal (PhD)
  • Vidic, Nada - Supporting Integrated Rare Disease Care (PhD)

 

I have had 9 HDR completions, outlined below.

  Completions Role
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 4 2 as Primary, 2 as Co-supervisor
Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) 2 2 as Primary
Master of Philosophy (MPhil) 1 1 as Co-supervisor
Medicine (Hons) 2 1 as Primary, 1 as Co-supervisor

My Engagement

Leadership

 

Other current roles

 

 

Editorial

 


My Teaching

MyEducation Portfolio

My teaching interests are focused on strengthening health organisations, primary health care, and health equity.

I convene PHCM9391 Health Organisations, Strategy and Change, a core course within the School of Population Health's Master of Health Leadership and Management programs. I am Director of Double Degrees in the School of Population Health. I contribute to PHCM9615 Principles and Practice of Primary Health Care. 

I design activities and assessments that give students choice and control about the focus of their learning, and which allow them to draw on their prior learning and experiences.​​​​​​ I'm committed to continuous educational improvement, and work in partnership with students to enhance courses.

Educational grants
I have been an investigator on Australian government-funded projects for education and capacity building worth $2.854 million between 2003 and 2028.

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Location

Medicine & Health
School of Population Health
Building C29 HTH Level 5
UNSW Sydney NSW 2052

Contact

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ORCID as entered in ROS

orcid_icon https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1716-2009

Videos

Discussion I facilitated with Preeyaporn Srasuebkul, Margo Barr, and Andrew Hayen as part of the Carers NSW Carers Knowledge Exchange
Keynote address at the "Can Technology Speak my Language? The role of technology in health translation and interpreting" Forum, Sydney.
Keynote address at HIA12 12th International Health Impact Assessment Conference, Quebec City.
Presentation at the NSW launch of the CALD Assist app, Sydney.
Invited keynote (translated into Spanish) at the Udalerria osasun sortzaile (Cities Creating Healthy Spaces) Conference, Bilbao, Spain.
Presentation with Associate Professor Margo Barr for the ICIC21 International Conference for Integrated Care 2021.
Research Incubator 2025: Opportunities and challenges of working with linked datasets [Facilitated panel discussion]
It’s happening already: The use of translation apps in healthcare settings
Fit for More Than One Purpose: Typologies, Theory and Evaluation in HIA
The use of machine translation in healthcare settings in NSW
Osasunaren galneko inpaktua ebaluatzea hiriko osasuna sustatzeko tresna gisa: Australiako esperientzia (Health Impact Assessment as a tool to promote urban health: The experience in Australia)
Understanding carer roles and challenges in Central and Eastern Sydney, Australia: A population based linked cohort study of people age 45 years and over

UNSW Sydney NSW 2052 Australia Telephone +61 2 93851000
Authorised by Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)
UNSW CRICOS Provider Code: 00098G ABN: 57 195 873 179

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