ORCID Profile
0000-0002-9078-9601
Current Organisation
Queensland University of Technology
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Research Topics
In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Top 5 Research Topics
ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)
Gender Specific Studies | Rural Sociology | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health | Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified | Public Health and Health Services | Other Studies in Human Society | Health and Community Services |
ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)
Gender and Sexualities | Health and Support Services not elsewhere classified | Indigenous Health not elsewhere classified | Health Related to Specific Ethnic Groups | Rural Health
Related Links
Publications
Australian women's complex engagement with the yummy mummy discourse and the bodily ideals of good motherhood
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2017
Different perspectives on the key challenges facing rural health: The challenges of power and knowledge
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 25-05-2018
DOI: 10.1111/AJR.12436
Abstract: To examine the effects of dominant knowledge in rural health, including how they shape issues central to rural health. In particular, this article examines the roles of: (i) deficit knowledge of rural health workforce (ii) dominant portrayals of generalism and (iii) perceptions of inferiority about rural communities in maintaining health disparities between rural- and metropolitan-based Australians. A Foucauldian framework is applied to literature, evidence, case studies and key messages in rural health. Three scenarios are used to provide practical ex les of specific knowledge that is prioritised or marginalised. The analysis of three areas in rural health identifies how deficit knowledge is privileged despite it undermining the purpose of rural health. First, deficit knowledge highlights the workforce shortage rather than the type of work in rural practice or the oversupply of workforce in metropolitan areas. Second, the construction of generalist practice as less skilled and more monotonous undermines other knowledge that it is erse and challenging. Third, dominant negative stereotypes of rural communities discourage rural careers and highlight undesirable aspects of rural practice. The privileging of deficit knowledge pertaining to rural health workforce, broader dominant discourses of generalism and the nature of rural Australian communities reproduces many of the key challenges in rural health today, including persisting health disparities between rural- and metropolitan-based Australians. To disrupt the operations of power that highlight deficit knowledge and undermine other knowledge, we need to change the way in which rural health is currently constructed and understood.
‘Re-placing’ professional practice
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-2021
DOI: 10.1111/AJR.12717
Abstract: While preparation for professional practice is conceived as placeless, it is enacted in place. Consequently, many professionals find themselves working in conditions significantly different than those they were educated in and for. This is especially relevant for new professionals arriving in rural settings after preparation in urban programs, where metrocentric models of orientation to practice are implicitly privileged. The consequent dis‐join between practice and place often results in new professionals feeling ‘out of place’ and questioning their professional competence. It also results in settings outside the metrocentric norm being viewed as less desirable practice contexts. Negative desirability hinders professional recruitment, while feeling out of place and incompetent hinders professional retention both are longstanding issues in rural communities. Recent developments in professional education and practice standards emphasise adaptability to practise in specific contexts. However, ‘context,’ a primary focus to date for rural preparation is presented as a largely static backdrop that needs to be accommodated to engage in the ‘real practice’ one was trained for. Drawing on the spatial turn in social theory, we argue that place both shapes and is shaped by professionals and their practices and as such, must be engaged with deeply and dynamically. This conceptualisation of the relationship between place and practice has critical implications for professional preparation. As interdisciplinary practitioners and researchers working in erse contexts, we examine ‘place’ from a social constructivist perspective as a focal point for professional preparation.
Talking about overweight and obesity in rural Australian general practice
Publisher: Hindawi Limited
Date: 11-10-2018
DOI: 10.1111/HSC.12672
Abstract: As many patients' sole point of contact with the health care system, primary health care physicians (general practitioners [GPs] in Australia) are often positioned as key players in responding to rates of overweight and obesity in dominant public discourse. However, research from Western industrialised countries suggests that GPs may not be prepared for, or confident in, having conversations about overweight and obesity with patients. Little attention has been given to this topic in Australia, particularly in the context of rural health. The aim of this study was to understand how GPs in two rural settings in Victoria, Australia talk about overweight and obesity with patients. Working from a multidisciplinary perspective, a qualitative study design was adopted, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven GPs and seven GP patients living in two rural communities between January and April, 2016. Data was coded manually and thematic analysis was used to explore the data. The findings of this study support the argument that, in contrast to dominant messages within public health discourses, GPs may not be best placed to act as the primary actors in responding to overweight and obesity as they are constructed in epidemiological terms. In fact, the perspectives of GP study participants suggest that to do so would compromise important dimensions of general medical practice that make it simultaneously a human practice. Instead, more balanced, holistic approaches to discussing and responding to overweight and obesity with patients could be taken up in local, interdisciplinary collaborations between different health professionals and patients, which utilise broader social supports. Focussing on long-term, incremental programs that consider the whole person within their particular socio-cultural environment would be a productive means of working with the complexities of overweight and obesity. However, structural level changes are required to ensure such initiatives are sustainable in rural practice.
Perspectives of Aboriginal issues among non-Aboriginal residents of rural Victorian communities
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 19-08-2017
DOI: 10.1002/AJS4.16
Making the case for place based governance in rural health workforce recruitment and retention: Lessons from Canada and Australia
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2022
Exploring the gap between refugee-background communities’ needs and existing community-based physical activity programs in Australia
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 15-05-2023
Abstract: Physical activity programs run by local government, public health and not-for-profit sectors are a key public health strategy for improving rates of physical activity within local communities. However, these programs are underutilized. This is especially the case among members of refugee-background communities whose participation could have far-ranging and multilevel benefits. To explore how greater engagement among refugee-background communities with these programs could be fostered in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, a qualitative study was undertaken from the perspectives of both community-based physical activity program providers and agencies involved in delivering services to refugee-background communities. This study involved a series of semi-structured interviews with a purposive s le of personnel from agencies that work with in iduals and families from refugee-background communities and organizations that provide low-cost or no-cost physical activity programs and initiatives. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to interpret meaning from these data. Three themes relating to how participation in community-based physical activity programs could be improved among refugee-background communities were identified: improving cultural safety through intersectoral collaboration confronting constraints imposed by the broader public health policy environment and building capacity and empowering the community to ersify the sector. The findings highlight the importance of localized, deep-level intersectoral collaborations in bridging the gap between the health and social care needs of refugee-background communities and existing physical activity programs. However, a range of systems-produced barriers to the creation of such collaborations must be addressed to enable local actors to help mitigate and address the systemic exclusion of marginalized populations from participation in broader society.
Building readiness for inclusive practice in mainstream health services: A pre-inclusion framework to deconstruct exclusion
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2021
‘I think we're getting a bit clinical here’: A qualitative study of professionals' experiences of providing mental healthcare to young people within an Australian rural service
Publisher: Hindawi Limited
Date: 07-09-2020
DOI: 10.1111/HSC.13152
Abstract: This paper contributes to scholarship on the medicalisation of mental health support for young people through a case study of a multidisciplinary mental health service in rural Australia. All staff (n = 13) working at the service participated in semi-structured, in idual interviews. Transcripts of interview data were read and selectively coded and interpreted in relation to the overarching question of how participants view and experience mental health care provision to a erse range of young people. Following analytical reflection, codes pertaining to engagement, accessibility and care provision were re-examined using the concept of medicalisation to understand the biomedical underpinning of mental healthcare and how this plays out in the experiences and perceived challenges participants talked about in responding to the mental health concerns of erse young people. The resulting analysis is presented under five theme headings: (a) privileging clinical expertise and priorities within service provision, which was an important source of conflict for some participants (b) 'multidisciplinary' teams-a 'difficult kind of culture at times' (c) articulations of where cultural barriers lie (d) the tracks along which young people are directed to 'engage' with 'mental health' and (e) a clinical 'feel' to space. We suggest that service and system investment needs to be given to alternative ways of thinking about and approaching mental health and care provision that are cognisant of, and engage with, the inherent connections between in idual circumstance and social, place, cultural, economic and political contexts. This is particularly relevant to the provision of care in rural contexts because of limited service options and the complexities of access and providing care to a erse range of young people living in isolated environments. Interdisciplinary frameworks need to be enacted and services must acknowledge their own cultural positions for alternative ways of working to become possibilities.
‘I love my job…it’s more the systems that we work in’: the challenges encountered by rural sexual and reproductive health practitioners and implications for access to care
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-02-2021
DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2021.1880640
Abstract: This paper focuses on rural aspects of sexual and reproductive health and sexuality. Disadvantage of access to practitioners with expertise in sexual and reproductive health and sexuality is compounded for rural residents. Retaining and supporting the rural sexual and reproductive health workforce is important in addressing sexual health inequities and promoting the sexual and reproductive rights of rural residents. However, little is known about the role-related challenges encountered by rurally-based sexual and reproductive health practitioners. We draw on 15 qualitative interviews with general practitioners and nurses with recognised expertise in sexual and reproductive health working in three rural regions of Victoria, Australia. Findings highlight the precarious state of sexual and reproductive health delivery in rural contexts and draw attention to the unsustainability of current systems for providing access to care in rural settings. Problems stem from cultural processes and assumptions within the health sector. Adapting organisational cultures and how sexual and reproductive health is structured within the health system are critical to improving access for rural residents. Our findings have relevance for other high-income, Eurocentric and metrocentric countries with public health systems and similar geographies.
Prioritising the cultural inclusivity of a rural mainstream health service for First Nation Australians: an analysis of discourse and power
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 18-05-2018
The Power in Rural Place Stigma
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-05-2023
DOI: 10.1007/S11673-023-10260-9
Abstract: The phenomenon and implications of stigma have been recognized across many contexts and in relation to many discrete issues or conditions. The notion of spatial stigma has been developed within stigma literature, although the importance and relevance of spatial stigma for rural places and rural people have been largely neglected. This is the case even within fields of inquiry like public and rural health, which are expansively tasked with addressing the socio-structural drivers of health inequalities. In this paper, we argue that developing a better understanding of rural place stigma is critical for addressing contemporary patterns of spatial injustice and health inequalities affecting rural communities globally. Drawing on international literature and ex les from the reported experiences of rurally living Australians and news and other media, we present an analysis highlighting the power in rural place stigma. In doing so, we build a case for the relevance and importance of interrogating rural place stigma, especially in the fields of public and rural health, for changing the conditions within—and the broader positioning of—the rural in the public and political landscapes.
Re-producing rural health: Challenging dominant discourses and the manifestation of power
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2016
A modified Continuous Quality Improvement approach to improve culturally and socially inclusive care within rural health services
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-03-2018
DOI: 10.1111/AJR.12409
Abstract: The sickest Australians are often those belonging to non-privileged groups, including Indigenous Australians, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, intersex and queer people, people from culturally and linguistically erse backgrounds, socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, and people with disabilities and low English literacy. These consumers are not always engaged by, or included within, mainstream health services, particularly in rural Australia where health services are limited in number and tend to be generalist in nature. The aim of this study was to present a new approach for improving the sociocultural inclusivity of mainstream, generalist, rural, health care organisations. This approach combines a modified Continuous Quality Improvement framework with Participatory Action Research principles and Foucault's concepts of power, discourse and resistance to develop a change process that deconstructs the power relations that currently exclude marginalised rural health consumers from mainstream health services. It sets up processes for continuous learning and consumer responsiveness. The approach proposed could provide a Continuous Quality Improvement process for creating more inclusive mainstream health institutions and fostering better engagement with many marginalised groups in rural communities to improve their access to health care. The approach to improving cultural inclusion in mainstream rural health services presented in this article builds on existing initiatives. This approach focuses on engaging on-the-ground staff in the need for change and preparing the service for genuine community consultation and responsive change. It is currently being trialled and evaluated.
Why place matters: A rurally-orientated analysis of COVID-19’s differential impacts
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2020
What COVID‐19 could mean for the future of “work from home”: The provocations of three women in the academy
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-10-2020
DOI: 10.1111/GWAO.12548
Abnormal Mothers: Breastfeeding, Governmentality and Emotion Amongst Regional Australian Women
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 19-11-2016
Responding to Health Outcomes and Access to Health and Hospital Services in Rural, Regional and Remote New South Wales
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 02-03-2023
DOI: 10.1007/S11673-023-10237-8
Abstract: Ethical perspectives on regional, rural, and remote healthcare often, understandably and importantly, focus on inequities in access to services. In this commentary, we take the opportunity to examine the implications of normalizing metrocentric views, values, knowledge, and orientations, evidenced by the recent (2022) New South Wales inquiry into health outcomes and access to hospital and health services in regional, rural and remote New South Wales, for contemporary rural governance and justice debates. To do this, we draw on the feminist inspired approach to rural health ethics involving analysis of power relationships developed by Simpson and McDonald and related ideas from critical health sociology. In presenting this analysis, we extend contemporary thought about spatial health inequities and structural violence.
The utility of conceptualisations of place and belonging in workforce retention: A proposal for future rural health research
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2020
Exploring the role‐based challenges of providing culturally inclusive health care for maternal and child health nurses: Qualitative findings
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 15-02-2020
DOI: 10.1002/NOP2.457
Sense of place, place attachment, and belonging-in-place in empirical research: A scoping review for rural health workforce research
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2022
DOI: 10.1016/J.HEALTHPLACE.2022.102756
Abstract: Rural communities around the world face chronic shortages of medical, nursing, and allied health professionals that contribute to serious inequalities between urban and rural residents. Three concepts have been identified as relevant for health workforce recruitment and retention: sense of place, place attachment, and belonging-in-place. However, there is limited information regarding operationalisation of these concepts within health workforce studies. This paper presents findings from a scoping review investigating empirical application of these concepts across a range of disciplines. Findings identify various strategies for empirical application of two of these three concepts to health workforce research and highlight the value of particular approaches for studies of rural health workforce retention. The paper concludes with several recommendations for future research.
Introduction to the special issue – Imagining rural futures in times of uncertainty and possibility: Progressing a transformative research agenda for rural sociology
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 18-01-2022
DOI: 10.1177/14407833211071126
Abstract: Historically and now, the rural is frequently relegated to the periphery of broader public and policy debates, and within the discipline of sociology. At this moment in time, where the world needs radical re-imagining for the future, rural perspectives and realities must be visible and addressed. This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Sociology which seeks to articulate how rural sociology is a crucial field of study for (re)imaging rural futures. In this article, we provide an overview of the research included in the collection, which draws much needed attention to some of the specific contemporary challenges encountered in rural places and some of the possibilities for transforming rural futures, and rural sociology. We argue that rural places are a key site where transformative change can, and does occur, and that rural sociologists are ideally positioned to work with and for rural communities in effecting desired change.
When the social meets health in rural Australia: confronting the disconnect
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 22-01-2017
Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Gamblers of East Asian Descent in Australia: A Comprehensive Review of Current Evidence
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 28-03-2023
DOI: 10.1007/S10899-023-10202-5
Abstract: As a country with one of the highest per capita gambling losses per year in the world, and an evolving multicultural profile, Australia has become an important setting in which to examine the harms and benefits related to gambling. The Australian population includes people from East Asian cultural backgrounds who are a key demographic of interest for gambling operators planning to grow revenue. However, Australian gambling research has concentrated primarily on those belonging to the dominant cultural group. Most of the previous and limited number of studies to examine gambling among culturally and linguistically erse (CALD) residents have focused on people of Chinese descent, and much of the literature is now becoming relatively old. This review examines the current evidence around cultural variations in gambling prevalence, motivations, beliefs, behaviours, and help service utilisation, focusing on gamblers with an East Asian cultural background. Numerous domains in which gambling motivations and behaviours vary across cultural groups are identified, and methodological considerations related to ethnographic gambling research are discussed. This review found that while barriers and predictors to help-seeking for CALD gamblers have been studied extensively, contemporary evidence of help service utilisation and effectiveness in Australia is lacking. Further research providing an accurate assessment of the impacts of gambling for CALD gamblers is needed to ensure that harm minimisation resources are effective for those most vulnerable to harm.
DON'T SHUT UP: AUSTRALIA'S FIRST PAID PARENTAL LEAVE SCHEME AND BEYOND
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-2013
Misconceptions of the Deaf: Giving voice to the voiceless
Publisher: University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
Date: 08-12-2017
DOI: 10.5195/HCS.2017.211
Abstract: The Deaf usually do not see themselves as having a disability however, discourses and social stereotyping continue to portray the Deaf rather negatively. These discourses may lead to misconceptions, prejudice and possibly discrimination. A study was conducted to identify the challenges members of the Deaf community experience accessing quality health care in a small Island state of Australia. Using a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with service providers and the Deaf community. Audist discourses of deafness as deficiency, disability and disease remain dominant in contemporary society and are inconsistency with the Deaf community’s own perception of their reality. Despite the dominant constructions of deafness and their affect on the Deaf’s experience of health service provision, many Deaf have developed skills, confidence and resilience to live in the hearing world. The Deaf were pushing back on discourses that construct deafness as a disempowering impairment.
Related Organisations
Related Funding Activities
Increasing Inclusion In Rural, Generalist Health Services
Start Date: 2017
End Date: 2019
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP170101187
Start Date: 06-2017
End Date: 11-2020
Amount: $298,500.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityLinkage Projects - Grant ID: LP190100216
Start Date: 02-2021
End Date: 02-2024
Amount: $251,442.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity