Lead Investigators

Rhonda Small is the Acting Director at Mother & Child Health Research (La Trobe University) and principal investigator for COMPASS. She has had a longstanding interest in maternity care and immigrant women and in 2005 was awarded an NHMRC Career Development Award to investigate variations in obstetric outcomes for immigrant and refugee women, to conduct further research on women’s experiences of care and to design interventions that might improve the maternity care immigrant and refugee women receive. Rhonda is a co-convener of ROAM (Reproductive Outcomes and Migration), a collaborative network of perinatal researchers in Europe, Canada and Australia, all with interests in migration and reproductive outcomes. Her research interests also include maternal depression, health after operative birth and women’s experiences of family violence.  She is a chief investigator with Angela Taft on MOSAIC, a cluster randomised trial of non-professional (mentor mother) support for women experiencing partner abuse during their childbearing years, and also on a follow-up trial

Stephanie Brown is a Principal Research Fellow and Group Leader for the Healthy Mothers Healthy Families group at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. She is currently leading two large NHMRC funded studies: the Maternal Health Cohort Study and a population-based survey of recent mothers in Victoria and South Australia. Her research interests include the natural history of maternal physical and emotional health after childbirth and role of obstetric risk factors in contributing to maternal morbidity, outcomes of early obstetric discharge, and assessment of women’s views and experiences of different models of maternity care. She has a background in women’s health policy and consumer advocacy, and worked for many years at La Trobe University’s Mother & Child Health Research centre prior to moving to MCRI in January 2007.

Jeanne Daly always had difficulty making up her mind about what she wanted to be. She grew up on a South African farm, trained as an organic chemist, taught high school maths, became a political activist, then emigrated to Australia. Here she became an environmental scientist, switched to sociology and concentrated on research using qualitative methods. As it turned out, these various skills came in useful when she and Judith Lumley were appointed in 2000 to edit the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. She is an adjunct Associate Professor with Mother and Child Health Research, La Trobe University and member of the Melbourne Qualitative Research Methods Group. Her books include Evidence-based medicine and the search for a science of clinical care (University of California Press and Milbank Memorial Fund, 2005). A number of her edited books derive from a commitment to debate on health research and research methods.

Christine MacArthur is a perinatal epidemiologist and Professor of Maternal and Child Epidemiology at the University of Birmingham in the UK. She is a visiting lead investigator with COMPASS. Christine has extensive experience in maternal health research, including complex interventions to improve maternal health outcomes. Her research interests include postnatal care, smoking in pregnancy, maternal depression, breastfeeding initiation, incontinence and epidural analgesia, as well as maternal health in resource poor settings.

Judith Lumley is the former Director of Mother & Child Health Research at La Trobe University and principal investigator for COMPASS. Judith is an epidemiologist and public health physician, with long-standing research interests in reproductive and perinatal health and health services. She developed and then managed the Victorian Perinatal Data Collection Unit (1981-1994), chaired the Victorian Ministerial Review of Birthing Services (1988-90) and was awarded an Honorary Member in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2005. Judith was a co-editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health between 2000 and 2008.

Karen Willis is a Senior Lecturer in sociology at the School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania, and joined COMPASS on secondment for 12 months in February 2008. Her research interests are in health policy, health technology, and women’s health. She is also passionate about qualitative method. Karen teaches qualitative research methods and has been working with the Melbourne based Qualitative Research Methods Group in the development of guidelines for high quality qualitative health research that are accessible and informative for the wide range of researchers that wish to use these methods. Karen is also interested in complex interventions in health care. She has recently completed a project exploring how people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease respond to a self management program. She has conducted evaluation research for NEWPIN – a program to assist parents of young children. Her recent research has comprised an award winning collaboration with local government to explore children’s hopes for the future, and, more recently, perceptions of risk amongst a community deemed at risk of flooding.