Past Research Students

This research project was undertaken by Isabel Latz as a visiting research student from the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands, in 2008-2009.

Isabel’s project used the Menzies Centre-Nous Group Survey of Attitudes to the Australian Healthcare System 2008 data to look at measures of satisfaction with the healthcare system and the factors that shape these attitudes. Her Masters in Health Sciences Research thesis was accepted by the University of Maastricht in 2009.

This research projects was undertaken by Anne-marie Boxall. This thesis investigates the causes of health insurance policy reform in Australia between the late 1960s and mid-1980s. During this time, a universal health insurance scheme (Medibank) was implemented, progressively dismantled, and re-introduced again (this time as Medicare).

Three main findings emerge from this study:

• There were multiple, inter-related causes of health insurance policy reform over this time, but the prime minister’s views on health insurance policy, and the relationship between health insurance policy and the broader social, economic and political policy context were especially important;
• Medibank was a critical turning point in the development of Australia’s health system because it forced successive governments to search for an economically sustainable way of providing universal access to care with a hybrid public-private insurance system;
• Medicare brought a degree of stability to the health system because it was implemented as part of a major restructure of Australia’s economy. However, the pressure for further health system reform remains because no Australian government has managed to resolve the long-standing tension between the public and private insurance schemes.

This research project was undertaken by Dr Masoud Mirzaei. The purpose of this study was to:

• examine the patterns and determines of the coronary heart disease (CHD) epidemic across different parts of the world;
• review the contribution of the four major modifiable CHD risk factors to the decline of the epidemic in developed countries; and to
• examine whether changes in mortality accompanied or preceded the major risk factor changes over time.

This study also aimed to prioritise potential interventions to tackle major risk factors in developing countries with increasing mortality from CHD.

Unlike many developed countries, different patterns of CHD were observed across developing countries which led to a new classification of the disease based on epidemic pattern. The systematic review confirmed that the major modifiable risk factors contribute to 50-70% of the decline of the disease in developed countries.

Different patterns of CHD epidemic suggest that while CHD is a global problem, no single global strategy for CHD control is likely to be applicable in all less developed countries at once. Interventions that aim to control CHD should take into account what stage in the epidemic cycle the country of interest has progressed to.