Health Services Research Unit

Our team

  • CCCH_-_Hiscock_Harriet

    Prof Harriet Hiscock

    Director

    Prof Harriet Hiscock is a consultant paediatrician, NHMRC Practitioner Fellow, inaugural Director of the Health Services Research Unit at The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Group Leader of the Health Services Research Group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She seeks to improve child health outcomes at a systems level through health services research including developing and trialing new models to shift care of more simple conditions from the hospital system to the community and reducing unwarranted variation in care. 

    Email: harriet.hiscock@rch.org.au

    Dr Mary White

    Research fellow

    Dr Mary White is a consultant Paediatric Endocrinologist, a Research Officer with the Health Services Research Unit at The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne and an honorary Senior Fellow with the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include seeking ways to optimise patient care and experience within the healthcare system by improving pathways to care in the outpatient setting. She has a particular focus on transition to adult services for young adults with chronic disease conditions.

    Email: mary.white@rch.org.au

    Dr Shaoke Lei

    Data Analyst

    Dr Shaoke Lei is a Data Analyst with the Health Service Research Unit at The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne. He completed a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics with Statistics from the University of Bristol UK, a Master of Science in Applied Statistics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Statistics from the University of Melbourne. His research interests lie in data science methodology and its application to health service research.

    Email: shaoke.lei@mcri.edu.au 

    Rachel Pelly

    Research Assistant

    Rachel Pelly is a Research Assistant with the Health Services Research Unit at The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne. She completed a Master of Epidemiology at University of Melbourne. Her research interests include informing policy and practice for equitable and sustainable healthcare for children, and addressing unmet mental healthcare needs of children and their families.

    Email: rachel.pelly@mcri.edu.au

    Stephanie Newman

    Project Assistant

    Stephanie Newman is Project Assistant with Health Services Research Unit at The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne. She has a background in Public Health and Health Promotion and is completing her Master of Public Health at Deakin University. Her interests lie in prevention and early intervention to reduce health and socio-economic inequities for vulnerable children and their families.

    Email: stephanie.newman@mcri.edu.au

    Prof Gary Freed

    Founding Principal Investigator for HSRU

    Prof Gary Freed has more than 25 years of experience in children's health services research. He was the principal investigator of the first paediatric health services research fellowship program funded by the National Institutes of Health and, in 2015, founded the Health Services Research Unit at The Royal Children’s Hospital. From 2013-2016, Prof Freed divided his time between the University of Michigan (USA)  and the University of Melbourne (Australia) where he served as director of the Australian Health Workforce Institute, professor of Population Health, and as visiting scholar in Health Care Policy at The Royal Children's Hospital.  In 2016 he returned full time to the University of Michigan to continue his research in health policy and economic issues focused on children. 

    A/Prof Kim Dalziel

    Health Economist

    A/Prof Kim Dalziel is a Health Economist within the Health Services Research Unit at The Royal Children’s Hospital. She is also Deputy Director of the Health Economics Group at the University of Melbourne, Team Leader within the Health Services Group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and collaborates with The Women's Hospital and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Kim leads a program of research in child health economics and has specialist expertise in economic evaluation and modelling, health-related quality of life measurement, child health policy, vulnerability/equity and use of health services and economic evaluation alongside clinical trials.

    Email: kim.dalziel@unimelb.edu.au

    Dr Jemimah Ride

    Health Economist

    Dr Jemimah Ride is a medically qualified health economist and Research Fellow at the Health Economics Unit at the University of Melbourne, with affiliate roles in the Health Services Research Group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and the Health Services Research Unit at the Royal Children’s Hospital. Her research addresses mental health and mental health care, including patient and family preferences for how healthcare is delivered, examining how changes to health service models affect unmet need and inequalities in healthcare, and cost-effectiveness of mental health interventions.

    Email: jemimah.ride@unimelb.edu.au