Primary Care and Health Services Research Group

The Primary Care and Health Services Research Group conducts clinical trials, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies and qualitative research to generate new knowledge and inform health policy.

Recent studies include ASPREE, IMPACT and Help-GP.

One of the significant areas we research is the use of quality-of-life as a subjective indicator of health status, among patients with chronic disease in Australian general practice.

We use data from the National Prescribing Service (MedicineInsight) that collects information from the electronic health records of approximately 600 Australian general practices with over 2500 GPs and more than 3.5 million patients of all ages. We are currently exploring areas related to musculoskeletal health (including vitamin D testing), primary and secondary prevention of heart disease, respiratory health and influenza, sleep disorder assessment and management, immunisation and child health.

The Australian Sentinel Practices Research Network (ASPREN), funded by the Department of Health (Office of Health Protection), is the only national primary care influenza surveillance network in Australia. It provides the Federal Government and World Health Organisation (WHO) with annual influenza vaccine effectiveness to decide which vaccines will be used in the following winter. ASPREN is an essential part of infectious disease surveillance and pandemic preparedness in Australia.

We have a strong interest in preventive health care including health checks, improving preventive health care and the development of practice based systems to assist GPs and patients to access and use quality health care.