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RESEARCH TEAM MEMBERS

The combined research expertise of the Thai and Australian team is extensive and impressive. Three Thai and two Australian applicants were awarded research scholarships for the Thai Cohort Study at the beginning of 2005 and have joined this multi-disciplinary team of renowned researchers from The ANU, The University of Queensland, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Chiang Mai University and several branches of the Thai government.

MEMBERS OF THE THAI TEAM AT STOU, CHIANG MAI UNIVERSITY AND THE MINISTRY OF PUBLIC HEALTH

• Associate Professor Sam-Ang Seubsman, the Thai Principal Investigator (PI) at STOU, is an active and successful investigator in the Thai health system, who has worked on community development for grass-roots health interventions and social marketing. Dr Sam-Ang has experience in nutritional epidemiology, community cohort work and experimental interventions. The research team at STOU, including Ms Nuchjaree Kamolsukudom, has a successful record of attracting funds and completing work throughout Thailand.
  
• Dr Boonchai Somboonsook and Ms Duangkee Vilainerun are experienced and influential officials within the Thai Ministry of Public Health (MOPH). Both trained to Masters level in field research at The University of Queensland. Dr Boonchai is Deputy Director General, Department of Medical Sciences, MOPH. Ms Duangkee Vilainerun has experience in environmental health, water, sanitation and related divisions within the MOPH and has been involved in developing a multi-disciplinary Health Impact Assessment process for the Thai Government.
  
• Ms Suwanee Khamman is a senior person within the peak planning agency for Thai economic development – the National Economic and Social Development Board. The NESDB will be involved with Macroeconomic and Health plans now being developed in Thailand and will be the agency to first use information produced by TCS before government ministries respond.
  
• Dr Tippawan Prapamontol, is the Assistant Director and Research Scientist at the Research Institute of Health Sciences (RIHS), Chiang Mai University. Dr Tippawan brings expertise in environmental science, toxicology, epidemiology and experience with other cohort studies. The RIHS has worked in collaboration with Professor Tony McMichael for many years.

The Australian team combines expertise across all public health disciplines, with experience supervising post-graduate research students and managing large research projects involving ecology, environmental health, field epidemiology, nutrition and social welfare, family structure and demography.

MEMBERS OF THE AUSTRALIAN TEAM AT NCEPH, ANU AND THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

• Professor Adrian Sleigh, the Australian PI at NCEPH, has conducted epidemiological research in rural and urban populations in South America, Asia and Australia. Most of this work has been cross-cultural and internationally collaborative. He has taught public health and epidemiology for more than two decades, supervised many PhDs and Master students, and been a remote area physician and Professor of Community Medicine. Current research interests include the impact and control of infections, health and large dams in China, health systems and health transitions, especially in Asia.
  
• Professor Tony McMichael, Director of NCEPH, has done extensive epidemiological research and written widely on diet, other lifestyle and environmental health effects. Professor McMichael's research areas include: environmental health - epidemiological studies, risk assessment, policy development; ecological sustainability and health (including global climate change, biodiversity loss, etc.); lifecourse epidemiological perspectives on infant/child/adult evolution of disease risks; urban environment - social and physical influences on patterns of health; diet, nutrition, energy balance and health - population and individual aspects. He has many publications on links between social conditions, lifestyle and disease, and recently on larger-scale processes driving socio-economic change and impacts on ways-of-life, environment and health.
  
• Dr Chris Bain (The University of Queensland) is a noted epidemiology methodologist and researcher with experience with other large cohort studies, including the US Nurses Health Study, now in progress for over 30 years, which he implemented for the first 5 years.
  
• Professor Tord Kjellstrom, Visiting Fellow at NCEPH, has research expertise in environmental and occupational epidemiology, air pollution, climate health-effects, crash injury, and occupational hazards including asbestos and toxic metals, environmental health policy and research with WHO, Geneva.
  
• Dr Lynette Lim - statistics, modeling, quality of life assessment and work-family effects on health;
  
• Dr Bruce Caldwell - social demography, reproductive health and urban health, with particular reference to Asia;
  
• Dr Jane Dixon - sociology, culinary cultures, commodity systems, obesity and health inequalities;
  

OTHER NCEPH COLLABORATORS

• Dr Lyndall Strazdins - workplace factors affecting health outcomes in employees, ethnographic studies of social inequalities, work conditions, parent resources and child developmental outcomes, work and family relationships, marital functioning and psychological well-being, physical health problems and psychological stress;
• Dr Cathy Banwell - anthropology, smoking, alcohol, illicit drugs, construction of social identity;
• Dr Gordon Carmichael - family formation decision-making in Australia, sexual and reproductive health, health inequalities, family formation and dissolution, nonmarital and adolescent sexual behaviour, fertility and fertility control, Australian mortality trends, patterns and differentials and Indigenous demography;
• Dr Emily Banks - large scale cohort studies on hormone replacement therapy, breast cancer screening and fracture;
• Dr Sharon Friel - nutritional epidemiology, social determinants of dietary habits and related health outcomes, food poverty, health inequalities, population health surveillance and health promotion policy and practice.
  

RESEARCH STUDENTS AT NCEPH, ANU

• Penny Haora
  Thesis title: Maternal Health and Birthing Outcomes in Thailand: Where have we come from? Where are we now? And where do we need to go?

  The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set as goal number five “to improve maternal health”, and Thailand has initiated several plans in line with this aim. Maternal mortality ratios (MMRs) for Thailand have reduced impressively over recent decades, however, little data on other birthing indicators/outcomes can be found at the national level. It is believed that in certain parts of the country, pregnant women face a greater risk of death during pregnancy or birthing, so what have been the key factors that have influenced the reduced overall mortality? Maternal death audits are reportedly conducted at institutional and/or provincial level, but questions exists regarding the collection of maternal health statistics and the appropriate analysis and utilisation of such. Maternal death audits or ‘confidential inquiries’ are conducted successfully in many countries with the aim of acquiring ‘lessons’ to prevent future deaths by addressing the causative factors of the deaths.

  Additionally, the MDGs report of 2005 states that for every women who dies in pregnancy or birth, twenty more “suffer serious injury or disability”. Ample justification is put forward in the international literature for the investigation of ‘near misses’ or severe maternal morbidities, with the same aim as the death audits. Minimal maternal/perinatal data appears to be routinely collected, analysed, disseminated at the national level in Thailand, however, the worryingly high rates of Caesarean section discovered through survey research methods, have attracted some attention from researchers.

  My study aims to investigate maternal health in Thailand, including:

  the collection and utilisation of relevant data the distribution and possible determinants of maternal deaths and morbidities the distribution and utilisation of various birthing 'technologies' including Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) the changes that have occurred over time, in the above three factors.
  A mixed-methods design is being utilised to answer the identified research questions. Particular attention is being given to geographical areas of higher mortality and to various sub-groups of women. The research process is set within a population health and social determinants of health framework, employing health services and population-based data.

• Cha-aim Pachanee
  Thesis title: Future Burden of Disease from Selected Health Risks in Thailand

• Arunrat Tangmunkongvorakul
  Thesis title: Sexual Health in Transition: Adolescent Lifestyles and Relationships in Contemporary Chiang Mai, Thailand

• Matthew Williams
  Thesis title: A Culture of Automobility in Bangkok and its Public Health Consequences

  This PhD thesis approaches automobility in Bangkok from the perspective of how a culture of auto dependency enmeshes itself in the urbanising context of Bangkok. It also seeks to ameliorate the public health impact of this culture.

  The process of growing auto dependency in Thailand is informed by many factors, including the cultural values Thais attach to car ownership and use. These values may reflect changing socio-economic variables related to the growing reach of a global capitalist organisation of Thai society, and the ways in which this particular economic and cultural system structures lives in the mega-urban region of Bangkok, creating new mobility needs. The 'expression' of these needs are influenced by mass transit options where they do or don't exist, but are concomitantly influenced by the social world Thais live in.
  

• Vasoontara Yiengprugsawan
  Health in transition: measuring and decomposing health inequalities in Thailand

  My proposed PhD thesis is entitled “Health in transition: measuring and decomposing health inequalities in Thailand” which aims to measure the extent of inequalities in various health-related outcomes: namely health status indicators, utilization of health facilities and illness expenditures; and to decompose causes of these inequalities (such as demographic, socio-economic, geographical or health welfare determinants). In addition, I attempt to look at the changes in the health inequalities over time in order to investigate the impact of the “Universal Coverage Scheme or 30 Baht Scheme” in reducing inequalities in health-related outcomes.