Nigel is public health and health services researcher with interests and expertise in quantitative research methods, epidemiology, evidence-based health care, clinical trials, and digital health. He is a member of the Improving health outcomes after musculoskeletal injury group at the RECOVER Injury Research Centre, and is a chief investigator of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Better Outcomes for Compensable Injury. His work focusses on the epidemiology and burden of minor to moderate injuries, longitudinal data analyses of intervention trial data, population studies of health-related quality of life and chronic pain, and the potential of digital heath for assessment and intervention following injury.
Nigel has particular interests in new innovations in healthcare, and has previously worked in minimally-invasive surgical trials in gynaecology, and clinical trials assessing the feasibility, efficacy and effectiveness of clinical telemedicine in paediatric healthcare. His doctorate work (Awarded 2011, UQ School of Medicine) involved the design, development, and clinical/cost/acceptability evaluation of real-time telemedicine for acute consultation between a tertiary neonatal intensive care unit and four peripheral referring hospitals in Queensland. He maintains an active research interest in telemedicine, and more broadly in digital health. Between 2004 and 2015, Nigel was involved in the telepaediatric service at the Royal Children's, and the Lady Cilento Children's hospitals in Brisbane where he also co-ordinated an Indigenous Ear Health Screening Program. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare and an academic editor for PLOS ONE.
Nigel regularly participates in national and international grant review panels, and is an active HDR and occupational-trainee supervisor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Society for Public Health (FRSPH), a member of the Australian Epidemiological Association (AEA), International Epidemiological Association (IEA), the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), the Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-Research and Open Science (AIMOS), and is a qualified Justice of the Peace, JP (qual).
Dr Lisa McHugh is a perinatal and infectious diseases epidemiologist at the UQ School of Public Health. She is an Emerging Leader (EL1) NHMRC post-doctoral research Fellow and lead investigator on a 5-year Investigator Grant called 'VaxiMums'. The 'VaxiMums' program is evaluating maternal vaccination programs, pregnancy loss, and respiratory infections. Before her PhD she completed a Master of Philosophy in Applied Epidemiology (MAE prgram) at the ANU.
Lisa was an early career research Fellow in the NHMRC funded APPRISE Centre for Research Excellence, that investigated the impact of influenza and whooping cough (pertussis) vaccinations recommended in pregnant First Nations women, and identifyed key factors affecting their uptake in pregnancy. Lisa was also chief-investigator on a multi-jurisdictional NHMRC funded project called 'Links2HealthierBubs' which created the largest linked cohort of individual mother-infant pairs to investigate the uptake, safety and effectiveness of influenza and pertussis vaccines, and the geographical, ethnic and socio-economic influences of vaccine uptake. Lisa was a co-investigator on a NHMRC funded COVID-19 Real-time Information System for Preparedness and Epidemic Response (CRISPER) project, which developed an interactive dashboard that mapped COVID-19 cases, widely utilised by multiple state and terrirory public health users.
Lisa's research experience and interests include clinical midwifery, First Nations health, infectious diseases, pregnancy and birth outcomes, and maternal vaccination. She has been a member of the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) since 2014 and is currently an editor for the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.
