CARA Data Assets: Technical description

Professor Vin Versace is Director of Deakin Rural Health (DRH) and founding Co-Director of the Centre for Australian Research into Access (CARA). In his role as Director of DRH he is responsible for delivering on the parameters of the Rural Health Multidisciplinary Health Training (RHMT) program. The overarching purpose of the RHMT program is to reduce workforce maldistribution of medical, nursing, and allied health professionals in rural and regional Australia – a central theme being to better understand and quantify access to services. The scope of CARA builds upon the concept of improving access to health services and includes building our understanding of related concepts such as access to education and other social determinants.

Anna Wong Shee holds a co-funded position with Grampians Health and Deakin Rural Health, Deakin University. She is a registered Physiotherapist with more than 20 years experience in Australia and the USA. Anna is a clinician researcher embedded in a large regional health service. Her work has focused on engaging and collaborating with stakeholders in rural and regional health services and communities. Anna is the Chair of the Western Alliance Research Translation Committee; Western Alliance is the first Australian academic health science centre to focus on regional health outcomes. Anna’s research interests include health professional research capacity and capability building, health service models of care, and health economic evaluation.

Associate Professor Mc Namara has worked at Deakin Rural Health (DRH) and its antecedent Greater Green Triangle University Department of Rural Health for over 20 years, and in 2014 was one of the department’s first PhD graduates. In his DRH Deputy Director role he is heavily committed to research capacity building and ECR development. To this end he has played key roles in the development and implementation of collaborative research capacity-building initiatives with multiple regional health services in western Victoria, was School of Medicine higher degrees coordinator 2018-21 (HDR Director for two years), and supports multiple early career researchers and PhD students in rural Victoria. Personal support to develop his implementation science career has included an Endeavour Executive Fellowship (2017), Faculty of Health Deans Postdoctoral Research Award (2016-17), Heart Foundation postdoctoral award (2014-15), and NHMRC NICS fellowship (2008-10) (implementation research focus).

His research focuses on person-centred care for vulnerable populations, research capacity building in rural health services, multidisciplinary care and continuity of care. With over ninety peer review publications, 20 technical/policy reports and over $30m in grant funding, CI Mc Namara has extensive expertise in health service implementation and evaluation methodologies, including trial design spanning the continuum of efficacy/effectiveness-implementation, service co-design, mixed methods evaluation/program evaluation, implementation science, survey design and mixed methods evaluation. This includes a leadership role in the nationwide 2016-18 Pharmacy Diabetes Screening Study, the second largest RCT and largest trial economic evaluation of a pharmacist intervention globally (cluster RCT involving 14,039 participants at 339 sites across Australia).

Associate Professor Mc Namara sits on multiple Steering/Advisory groups at regional Victorian health services to provide implementation, governance and evaluation support for health service initiatives.

Dr Neil Coffee is a Professor of Health Geography in Deakin Rural Health, Deakin University. He has been involved in the application of GIS to population, urban, social and health for 35 years, starting with the successful National Key Centre for Teaching and Research into the Social Applications of Geographic Information Systems at the University of Adelaide 1995-2000 (the first Australian centre applying GIS to social science).

The use of spatial techniques in health research has grown considerably in the past 25 years and Neil has been involved in several novel applications over this period. This includes the Australian development of the walkability index, accessibility indices, most notably Cardiac ARIA, the South Australian Epidemiological Geographic Information System (SAEGIS), the University of Canberra Australian Geospatial Health Lab (AGeoH-L) and now the Centre for Australian research into Access (CARA). These applications have been designed to integrate administrative data with both contemporary real-time exposure surveillance data for local-area social, built and physical environmental risk conditions.

Over his career, Neil has contributed to the broader understandings of the application to GIS to place and health research and the conceptual and methodological challenges faced when applying spatial methods. His research applying spatial methods to social science has been at the developing edge in Australia, spanning applications of GIS with social science and public health. Neil has also been instrumental in developing socio-economic GIS databases, the use of government collected and maintained administrative data for social and health research, and the integration of GIS into government systems.

Professor Philip Roberts specialises in Curriculum Inquiry and Rural Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra. He is the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Communities and the research leader of the Rural Education, Curriculum and Communities Research Group in the Centre for Sustainable Communities. Philip’s research focuses on the sustainability of rural communities, the attraction and retention of teachers in rural communities, the role of knowledge in curriculum and rural knowledges.

Professor Tanton is an economist with more than 30 years experience in the public sector and academia, including 18 years at the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) at the University of Canberra (5 years as Director), 6 years at the Australian Bureau of Statistics where he led development of the 2001 Socio-Economic Index for Areas, 5 years at the Commonwealth Grants Commission and 5 years at the Commonwealth Department of Finance.

At NATSEM, he led development of their spatial microsimulation model; the Child Social Exclusion index; the Index of Wellbeing for Older Australians; and the Jesuit Social Services Dropping off the Edge index in 2022.

In 2023, he left the University after the closure of NATSEM, and he now works full time running a private social and economic research company called Communities in Numbers.

He is passionate about applying modelling techniques to help solve complex problems, as well as informing policy to help increase the wellbeing of residents in local communities in Australia and internationally. He also helps clients with economic, social and demographic modelling, what-if analysis and training in interpreting econometric models and finding and using statistics. In his company, he has assisted the NSW Parliament develop an electorate profile and the Country University Centre Snowy-Monaro develop a community profile.

He has published widely on spatial disadvantage and poverty, including in international Statistics and regional science journals. He was President of the International Microsimulation Association from 2019 to 2023; is a member of the International Statistical Institute; the Economic Society of Australia; the Statistics Society of Australia; and the Australian and New Zealand Regional Science Association (ANZRSAI). He is also a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, is a Director of Northside Community Services in the ACT, and is an Honorary Professor at Macquarie University.

He is currently working with CARA on a Linkage Infrastructure grant developing a geocoded synthetic population of Australia.

Jesse Whitehead is a Senior Research Fellow at Te Ngira: Institute for Population Research at the University of Waikato. With a primary focus on health equity and population health, Jesse’s interdisciplinary research integrates insights from fields such as rural studies, demography, and Geographic Information Systems.

Jesse currently leads several research projects, including examining the impact of childhood residential mobility, exploring spatio-temporal variation in rural hospital admissions, and co-leading He Raraunga Haapori, a project within the Thriving Regions National Science Challenge which includes collaboratively developing interactive StoryMaps to highlight the moemoea and aspirations of mana whenua and haukainga.

As a member of CARA, Jesse is supporting the application of CARA methodoloies to Health and Emergency Management contexts.

Ralf is a GIS professional, with expertise in spatial analysis, data science and data system integration. Ralf has worked in the natural resource management and conservation planning sector for over 18 years. He has qualifications in Natural Resource Planning (German diploma), a M.Sc. degree in Geospatial Science (University of Queensland, 2006) and a Diploma in Groundwater science (Flinders Uni, 2016). His experience in spatial science also covers the areas of geoscience and the support of groundwater modelling.

In the more recent years, Ralf has further expanded his knowledge into data science, exploring methods of big data analysis and processing (e.g., electronic health data). His engagement in Health Geography includes having worked with the University of Canberra/Digital Health CRC, Deakin University/IPAN and ACU cognitive health projects. He has lived and worked over many years in regions such as West-Africa, Central Asia and Melanesia.

Marcus is a geographer with over 30 years experience in the geospatial industry as a researcher, manager and data scientist.

Marcus and Ralf-Dieter Schroers provide the technical leadership and expertise for CARA in terms of the management of data, the design of the processing architecture, and the production of tailored data outputs.

Previously, Marcus spent 15 years at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) managing small geospatial teams that supported the Australian Statistical Geography Standard and the Census. Across these roles Marcus managed the implementation of an ABS wide address geocoding solution which allowed greater integration of location and statistics.

Marcus was also part of the team that developed the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA+) and is presently managing the recalculation and future development of the remotenes index at the University of Adelaide.

Sarah Wood is an Associate Research Fellow with Deakin Rural Health. She has worked in various sectors, including academia, women’s health, not-for-profit, and health services. Sarah holds an MSc in Clinical Epidemiology and Applied Research and is currently completing her PhD in Health Geography at Deakin University. Sarah’s PhD has developed and validated the Spatial Methodology Appraisal of Research Tool (SMART).

Sarah’s research focuses on addressing health equity and access in rural populations. Recent projects include a systematic review examining spatial methods for measuring health service access and mapping spatial access to sexual and reproductive health services in regional Victoria.

Sarah is a member of the Western Victoria Primary Health Network Community Advisory Council, Southwest Healthcare Human Research Ethics Committee, Institute of Australian Geographers, and Australian Women’s Health Alliance.

Sam is a recent graduate of a Bachelor of Science from the University of South Australia and has worked part-time throughout his degree with CARA and the Australian Centre for Housing Research (ACHR).

Since graduating, Sam has become a full-time research assistant at CARA, assisting with geospatial data processing and analysis tasks. He is involved in CARA projects funded by an ARC Linkage, Infrastructure, Equipment & Fascilities grant that involves the rapid calculation of road distances and times to services across Australia. Sam is also involved in the the development of the Accessibility and Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) as part of CARA’s work with the ACHR.

His role requires skills in the processing of large geospatial data sets and their analysis using the GeoPandas and Pandana libraries in Python to calculate spatial relationships and travel times.