Belinda O'Sullivan

Belinda is a post-doc researcher leading international scale research about rural health systems, workforce capacity building, access, quality and distribution at The University of Queensland Rural Clinical School.

Belinda did her PhD with the Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life Survey (MABEL), applying the large longitudinal panel survey of Australian doctors to research rural outreach service patterns by specialists. She continues to work in the MABEL research team, collaborating between Melbourne University, University Queensland and Monash colleagues to support the rural work stream.

She was the Chief Investigator of the Monash Medical School rural medical workforce tracking study (2016-2019), producing substantial new evidence about the design effectiveness of the Monash rural medical program, attracting new funding for end to end rural medical training from the Murray Darling Medical Network.

Belinda was the Director of Research and Evaluation in the Office of the National Rural Health Commissioner (2018-2019). She played a lead role in consulting and developing national Taskforce Advice and brokered a national evaluation framework for the Pathway, along with supporting rural allied health policy options.

She worked with rural wonca in 2018 to lead a WHO consultancy producing a Checklist for implementing rural pathways for training and supporting health workers in low and middle income countries, of significant global interest for supporting stakeholders implement training in all disciplines, from any starting point.

Belinda has been the CI of Education Research Grants about rural GP supervisors and is leading partnership projects with GPSA about the quality and distribution of the GP supervisor workforce.

She graduated from the NSW Public Health Officer Training Program at NSW Health in 2002, after completing her MPH (Hons) in the area of tobacco control. Before that, she worked as a physiotherapy clinician at the Austin and in private practice.

She has nearly twenty years’ experience of developing and implementing workplace-based training and development to produce health workers with the right skills, distributed and working in areas of community need. Her experience spans writing competencies, developing training tools, training needs assessment and planning and formative and summative assessment.

Belinda supervises Bachelor of Medical Science (Honours), PhD students, and supports people doing projects which advance knowledge of rural health systems.

Belinda's PhD: "Rural outreach by specialist doctors in Australia"

Monash University - APA, PPA Awards and Advancing Women's Research Awards http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/1268685

WHO Rural Pathways Checklist https://www.globalfamilydoctor.com/News/RuralRound-upLandmarkGlobalRuralFramework.aspx

MABEL longitudinal study of Australian doctors www.mabel.org.au

Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Monash University

Member RFDS Victoria Research Committee