VicHealth researcher: Margaret Kelaher
“Addressing inequalities in health requires balance between individual, family and community risk factors"
Research Fellow Dr Margaret Kelaher is investigating how to produce more cohesive theoretical models that point to the way health policy and health promotion may best address inequalities in health.
Contact Dr Kelaher
Email: mkelaher@unimelb.edu.au
Phone: +61 (03) 8344 0648
Margaret’s research consists of five interrelated projects aimed at building bridges between the body of evidence concerning individual risk factors, community level intervention research and population health research. The overall aims are to:
- Compare the explanatory contribution of different theories addressing individual, community and environmental theories of the relationship between social capital and health
- Explore the interactions between individual, community and environmental characteristics and health
- Determine how individual, community and environmental characteristics affect the capacity of community level interventions to engage communities and their impact on health
- Develop a framework to assist in determining an appropriate mix of interventions at different levels
Margaret works from the Centre for Health Policy, Programs and Economics (CHPPE), which sits within the School of Population Health at the University of Melbourne. A multidisciplinary organisation, its core business is health services and policy research, and health economics. Staff have expertise in program evaluation, health economics, economic evaluation, health law, epidemiology, social sciences and research methodology and many have clinical backgrounds.
This research program will benefit Victorians by providing information about what aspects of community interventions are effective in addressing health disparities. This will provide information about how to design better information in the future, and how to strike an effective balance between different types of interventions.
Margaret believes that VicHealth is unique in Australia, not only because of its focus on prevention but also because of its emphasis on people, evidence and innovation.