Associate Professor Kathleen Falster
PhD, MPH, BAppSc(Hons).
I am an epidemiologist leading research to inform and evaluate policy and service delivery initiatives to improve child population health. I also contribute to building population health workforce capacity by teaching epidemiological methods to postgraduate students.
I work closely with policy makers in the health, child protection, education and social sectors to design epidemiological studies to answer policy and practice questions and to translate complex research findings into policy and practice.
I lead and collaborate on projects that build and analyse linked health and social data infrastructure to create the ‘intelligence’ needed to inform health system responses to public health problems affecting children, with a focus on disadvantaged children and inequities. My research program currently focuses on children involved with child protection services, evaluation of a sustained nurse-home visiting program and contributing population-level evidence on Aboriginal child health to mixed methods projects led by Aboriginal academics and/or Aboriginal Community Controlled Service collaborations.
I have expertise in epidemiological methods, data linkage, building analysis-ready linked datasets, cohort studies and advanced statistical methods to execute policy and practice revelant research.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
- 2020-2025 Transforming the health system response to child maltreatment: the need for cross-jurisdictional e-cohorts. NHMRC Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies Grant ($1,248,388), CIA.
- 2021-2025 Aboriginal child restoration from out-of-home care: pathways for success. ARC Discovery Indigenous Grant ($427,685), CIC (Lead, data linkage component of project).
- 2020-2025 ACCESS: Aboriginal Community Controlled Ear health Support System: developing, embedding and evaluating best practice models of care. MRFF Grant ($887,186), CIF (Lead, data linkage component of project).
- 2021-2024 Evaluation of Sustaining NSW Families, NSW Health tender ($400,000), CI (Lead, outcomes evaluation using data linkage).
- 2023-2027 Are we meeting the health needs of 50,000 children in out-of-home care?. MRFF Research Data Infrastructure Grant ($2.4M), CI (Lead, NSW stream of project).
- 2024-2027 First 2000 Days Program Grant. NSW Health ($350,000), CIA.
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.
I engage with media and other organisations to communicate the findings of our research to policy makers, service providers and community members.
The Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home Project investigator team, led by Dr BJ Newton at UNSW's Social Policy and Research Centre, recently published the following article in The Conversation:
Why are First Nations children still not coming home from out-of-home care?
Select examples of media from the Seeding Success study can be found here.
We work closely with policy agencies to translate research findings into policy and practice, via presentations and written communcation. For example, see the following Evidence to Action Note produced with the NSW Department of Communities and Justice titled:
My Research Supervision
Current supervision:
2021-ongoing: Primary supervisor, PhD candidate. Maternal substance use and child protection involvement: a population data linkage study to inform the health system response.
Completed supervision:
2019-ongoing: Joint supervisor, PhD candidate. Systematic review and an evaluation of family preservation and restoration programs in NSW.
2022: Co-supervisor, Masters of Public Health student. Epidemiology of blood stream infections among Queensland children, 2001-2019.
2013-2017: Co-supervisor, PhD. Inequalities in injury hospitalisations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children in NSW.
My Teaching
I contribute to population health workforce capacity by teaching epidemiological methods in two postgraduate courses:
- Foundations of Epidemiology (PHCM9794) - Lecturer in course
- Epidemiological Methods (PHCM9518) - Course convenor
I also coordinate the Research Project Elective courses for the School of Population Health postgraduate students (PHCM9148 6 UOC project; PHCM9144 12 UOC project; PHCM9150 18 UOC project).