Maria Donald

Maria is a Principal Research Fellow with the Primary Care Clinical Unit and Associate Professor Research Strategy affiliated with the Centre for Health System Reform and Integration (CHSRI). Her research uses a collaborative framework to investigate scalable and transformative primary health care interventions to improve patient health outcomes.

Maria has over twenty-five years’ experience in evaluating health innovations and health services research. She is an experienced implementation scientist with a strong background in primary care research, and skilled in operationalising pragmatic RCTs in general practice. She has an emerging track record researching long-term antidepressant prescribing in general practice with two successful research grants commencing in 2022 (CIB in collaboration with CIA Professor Katharine Wallis) https://medical-school.uq.edu.au/release:

• NHMRC Partnership Project. RELEASE+: REdressing Long-tErm Antidepressant uSE in general practice (2022-2027)
• Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) 2020 Clinician Researchers: Applied Research in Health. RELEASE: REdressing Long-tErm Antidepressant uSE in adults. A cluster RCT effectiveness-implementation hybrid type 1 design in general practice. (2022-2025)

She is a highly experienced mixed methods researcher whose academic career has involved public health research, health psychology, primary care, mental health, integrated GP-specialist care, chronic disease prevention and management, and sexual health. Prior to taking up her current positions, between 2012 and 2018, she was Senior Research Fellow with UQs NHMRC CRE in Quality & Safety in Integrated Primary-Secondary Care where she directed the evaluation (RCT of effectiveness, cost-analysis, and implementation) of a GP-based primary-secondary integrated model of care (the ‘Beacon model). Before that she was teaching and researching with The University of Queensland’s School of Public Health where she was a Senior Lecturer between 2006 and 2012. She also spent seven years in teaching and research at The University of Queensland’s Centre for Primary Health Care and five years before that as a researcher with the National Centre for HIV Social Research.