Dr Kathleen Falster

I currently lead an NHMRC-funded multi-jurisdictional electronic cohort (e-cohort) study of child maltreatment in Australia. I am also a Chief Investigator on several other research grants and an evaluation where I lead the data linkage component of the research, including: (1) an ARC Indigenous Discovery grant led by Dr BJ Newton (UNSW Social Policy Research Centre; SPRC) focused on Aboriginal child removals and restoration in NSW; (2) an MRFF grant led by A/Prof. Hasantha Gunasekera at the University of Sydney focused on enhanced models of care to improve the ear health of Aboriginal children in NSW; and (3) a NSW Health evaluation of the Sustaining NSW Families program led by Prof. Ilan Katz (UNSW SPRC). 

During my NHMRC Early Career Fellowship, I was a Chief Investigator and the Study Director of the NHMRC-funded 'Seeding Success' study that set out to identify factors that promote positive early childhood health and development in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children in NSW. I also collaborated with the Indigenous Health Outcomes Patient Evaluation (IHOPE) study where I led or supervised research investigating health inequalities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children in NSW, including potentially avoidable hospitalisations, the receipt of surgical procedures for middle ear disease, and hospitalisations for unintentional injuries. The IHOPE study was recognised as one of the NHMRC's 'Ten of the Best' in 2015. For more than a decade, I have also collaborated with the Study of Environment on Aboriginal Resilience and Child Health (SEARCH) at the Sax Institute, contributing to research on injuries, asthma, ear health and hospitalisations in urban Aboriginal children. 

In July 2021, I was invited to present at the Dept. of Communities and Justice Research Strategy launch; this video recording of the presentation provides an overview of some of the research that my colleagues and I have produced in recent years.