Associate Professor Anurag Sharma
Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy, UK
PhD (Economics) , ANU, Canberra
MPhil (Economics), IGIDR, Mumbai, India
MA (Economics), University of Rajasthan, India
BSc (Physics, Chemistry, Maths), Maharaja's College, Jaipur, India
I am Associate Professor at School of Population Health. Previously I worked at Centre for Health Economics, Monash University. I obtained PhD in Economics from the Australian National University, Canberra. My research is mainly focussed on answering policy questions regarding:
- supply and demand side of healthcare management such as modelling hospital choice, tackle overcrowding in Emergency Departments, role of elective surgery waiting times in private hospital utilisation, hospital behaviour under activity based funding, patient safety and workforce development
- health promotion policies and behavioural change: Impact of taxing sugar sweetened beverages on different income groups, body weight and obesity; Impact of alcohol taxation policies on alcohol consumption, pricing strategies to encourage health diet in disadvantaged groups
- public health issues in low income settings: Program evaluation to improve maternal and child health (Nepal), improving nutritional status of children (India), modelling chronic diseases (Mongolia), relationship between poverty and nutrition (India).
My research involves rigorous applied methods using large and complex datasets. I am currently CI and lead health economist on one NH&MRC Ideas Grant, three NHMRC Partnership Grants, one NSW Health COVID19 research grant and have been lead CI on one ARC Discovery grant in the past. I have also worked on several consultancy based research contracts including for OECD and WHO.
I have supervised five PhD students to completion (three as main supervisor) and currently supervising four PhD students as primary supervisor.
I am part of the Health Leadership and Management Group at the school and convene one core unit of MHLM (size ~ 320) and one elective unit (size ~ 50) on introductory and advanced health economics respectively. I am also a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (formerly Higher Education Academy), UK.
Personal Webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/anuragunsw/
Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anurag_Sharma
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
Category 1
CI and Health Economics Lead: Medical Reserach Future Fund #MRF2036251 "MyMedicare for older adults living in residential aged care homes: mixed-methods evaluation" (2025-2029). Total Amount: $1M
AI: Medical Reserach Future Fund #MRF2035697 "National Multidisciplinary Primary Care Research, Policy and Advocacy Consortium" (2025-2029). Total Amount: $5.2M
CIC: NH&MRC Ideas Grant # GNT2013323 "Hospital trajectories for 15 million Australians” (2022-2025). Total Amount: $655,934
CI and Health Economics lead: NH&MRC Partnership Grant # GNT2006240 "Developing a model of Preventative Healthcare for People with Intellectual Disability" (2021-2026). Total Amount: $1,244,755
CI and Health Economics lead: NH&MRC Partnership Grant # GNT1196912 "Community Health workers Extending Care in the Community" (2020-2025). Total Amount: $1,004,341
CI and Health Economics lead: NH&MRC Partnership Grant # GNT1192469 "Unifying and quality assuring disparate health silos with a common data model." (2020-2023). Total Amount: $735,795
Primary Chief-Investigator (CI A) from 2012-2014: Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project Grant # DP120102252 The Role of taxes and subsidies in promoting health lifestyles: an economic analysis. Total amount $ 300,000
Other Recent Grants
Chief Investigator from 2023-2024: UNSW Ageing Futures Institute Seed Grant " Boost 2.0: Boosting inpatient exercise after hip fracture and falls using alternative work force: an implementation evaluation"
Chief Investigator and health economics lead from 2021-22 : NSW Health COVID-19 Research Grant "24/7 eICU Model of Care" . Total Amount: $500,000
Chief Investigator from 2019-2021 : Roberts Co. (NSW) / NSW Government "Well Being of Construction Workers at Concorde Hospital". Total Amount: $272,512
Investigator 2019: Economic Evaluation of HammondCare Darlinghurst: an aged care home for people experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness
Investigator 2019 : NSW Health "Develop a preferred method to cost the health benefits of active transport". Total Amount: $81,000
Faculty of Medicine Teaching award at UNSW: Award for Educational Excellence (Academic Staff) - 2019
Alan Hodgkinson prize for outstanding contribution to teaching and students learning - 2017
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Expert Opinion: A record number of patients wait in our EDs. Can NSW’s hospital crisis be solved? (Sydney Morning Herald, July, 2023)
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Expert Opinion: Battle over prostheses list reforms (Medical Republic, November, 2021)
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Expert Opinion: Hospitals propped up by ‘broken bodies’ of workers, expert warns, as AMA calls for funding revamp (Canberra Times, October, 2021)
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Invited Technical Expert: Alcohol pricing policies: the potential of minimum pricing for protecting lives, WHO (March, 2021)
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Academic Member: POWH Community Based Services Future Directions Planning Inception Steering Committee, Sydney (August, 2019)
- Expert Opinion: Sugar tax could save 1600 lives, raise $400 million, Australian research shows (Sydney Morning Herald, April 2016)
- Interviewed by SYN Radio regarding soft drink tax introduced in England (March, 2016)
- Increasing Tax On Our Cheapest Alcohol Could Reduce Consumption, New Monash University Study Shows (Huffington Post, January 2016)
- Why higher booze tax is good for your health (Herald Sun, January 2016)
- Increasing tax on alcohol key to reducing consumption, says study (The Age, January 2016)}
- National Seven News, Channel 7 (May 2015)
- Australian researchers say taxing soft drinks could improve the nation's health (Ninemsn, March 2015)
- Experts propose 20c-a-litre soft drink levy to tax nation's waistline (Herald Sun, June 2014)
National Nine News, Channel 9 (June 2014) - Radio Interview on Triple R, Melbourne Radio (June 2014)
- Alcohol tax reform: a minimum price is in the public interest (The Conversation, May 2014)
- Urgent health care's catch-22 (Canberra Times, March 2013)
- GP clinics can ease pressure on emergency care (Australian Medical Association, April 2013)
- GP clinics at hospitals: an interview with Dr Sharma, Monash University (News Medical, April 2013)
My Research Supervision
I am currently supervising four PhD students as primary supervisor on following topics:
Effectiveness of Strategies to improve Health services sustainability in public health systems
What should be the role of health decision makers in health research to support knowledge translation?
Analyse the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) reimbursement framework in Australia
Hospital Sustainability – Improving value of care through leveraging new technology and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) data
Completed PhD Supervision
1. The relationship between income and alcohol: Implications for public health policy (Main Supervisor)
2. Linkages of HDI Nutrition in a Transient Economy of India (Main Supervisor)
3. Essays on impact evaluation of maternal and child health interventions in Nepal and India (Associate Supervisor)
4. Economic Implications of Cardiovascular Diseases in Mongolia (Associate Supervisor)
My Teaching
Recent Teaching:
Course Convenor: PHCM9441 - Introduction to Health care Economics and Financial Management (T1, 2020) - Blended Delivery- [Evaluation: 5.77/6]
Course Convenor: PHCM9082 - Advanced Health care Economics and Financial Management (T2, 2020) - Blended Delivery- [Evaluation: 5.57/6]