Dr Jenny Stewart Williams

Jennifer (Jenny) Stewart Williams hold postgraduate qualifications in epidemiology, biostatistics and economics. She has worked in a number of policy environments – national monetary policy (Reserve Bank of Australia), health service planning and development (Hunter Area Health Service and Hunter Health Services Research Group), community and primary care (NSW Divisions of General Practice and NSW Rural Divisions Co-ordinating Unit), medical workforce planning (NSW Rural Doctors Resource Network), and tertiary teaching hospitals, (Australian Resource Centre for Hospital Innovations). All of these positions have involved working in inter-disciplinary teams with clinicians, policy advisers and researchers. Dr Stewart Williams spent several years in a health services research environment in which one of her main roles involved analysing state wide hospital separations data using Diagnostic Related Groups to inform service planning and hospital budget allocations.

The experience gained working in these areas provided a good basis for her move into public health research. In 1999-2000 Dr Stewart Williams completed a Graduate Diploma in Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the University of Newcastle. In 2001 she joined Newcastle Institute of Public Health as a research officer to undertake a body of work in health services research with a focus of health inequalities.

Dr Stewart Williams was part of a team that undertook equity-focused health impact assessments and was a main author of an NHMRC handbook titled “Using Socioeconomic Evidence in Clinical Practice Guidelines. In 2001 Dr Stewart Williams was awarded a full Australian Postgraduate Research Scholarship and in 2002 she enrolled in a PhD in the Discipline of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle. Dr Stewart Williams' doctoral dissertation involved record linkage between a population-based cardiovascular disease register, the Admitted Patients Data Collection and a specialised hospital cardiac rehabilitation program database. The work demonstrated novel applications of methods which policy and decision makers can use to measure, deconstruct and interpret inequalities and inequities in access to care. Two sole author international peer-reviewed papers resulted from this work.

Since completing her doctorate in 2008 Dr Stewart Williams built upon her extensive experience in policy analysis and health service development and evaluation in developing proposals for population based analyses using linked data sets. She has held a Hunter Medical Research Institute Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship under the NSW Health Department’s Capacity Building Program since 2008. The Fellowship has afforded her opportunities to work on a number of projects using linked data sets including the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) the NSW Admitted Patient Data Collection and the Medicare Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Dr Stewart Williams’ recent publications report upon analyses of Australian and international data sets, including the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, Medicare Australia, the World Health Surveys and the Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE). She has been a visiting Research Fellow with the World Health Organization (2010-2012) and the Centre for Global Health Research at Umeå University in Sweden (2011). As a public health researcher, Dr Stewart Williams is committed to improving understanding of how gender and the social determinants impact on health, access to healthcare, and healthcare resource utilisation in different country settings.

Her goal is to inform policy for: major global reductions in behavioural risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs); improvements in NCD inequalities between and within countries, and the achievement of universal, accessible, high quality health care in all countries.

Research Expertise
Dr Stewart Williams has expertise in epidemiology, biostatistics and health economics. She undertakes analyses of national and international data sets to address issues of global public health importance - population ageing, the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCD) and social and economic inequalities in health. Dr Stewart Williams international research includes analyses of patterns of health and illness between and within countries at varying stages of economic development. Her national research platform includes longitudinal analyses of patterns of use and costs of health care resources in population cohorts.

Teaching Expertise
Dr Stewart Williams has experience in teaching undergraduate students in economics and medicine. She has supervised a number of World Health Organization interns. She successfully supervised one doctoral candidate to completion and is currently supervising another student (from Kenya) who is midway through her doctorate. Dr Stewart Williams also provides professional advice and support to postgraduate students from Australia, the United States, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Taiwan and China.

Administrative Expertise
Dr Stewart Williams has held executive officer positions with the Divisions of General Practice, the Rural Divisions Co-ordinating Unit and the Australian Resource Centre for Hospital Innovations. While working in these and other senior positions, she developed and implemented strategic and business plans in consultation with a range of stakeholders including clinicians, researchers, administrators, policy analysts and community representatives.

Collaborations
Dr Stewart Williams has ongoing collaborations with health economists at the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney and Hunter Medical Research Institute, and epidemiologists, statisticians and public health clinicians from the World Health Organization and the Centre for Global Health Research at Umeå University in Sweden. She is an approved supervisor for internships coordinated through the World Health Organization.