Associate Professor Federica Barzi, Dr Tahmina Begum and Christopher Sexton: From large data, little things grow

Seminar Overview

Data linkage offers an opportunity to explore rich insights, potentially improve precision using more accurate measures, and answer questions that would not be possible with a single dataset. This approach comes with challenges that includes complex governance arrangements, issues of data quality and privacy, and data management challenges. 

This seminar series will discuss three research projects (INDICARE, i-HiNT, and CARAT) at different stages of their research timelines to discuss opportunities and difficulties of data linkage, showing how it can be used to inform policy, practice, and better health outcomes.

The applications of data linkage and results will be discussed in reference to the following projects:

INDICARE: Type 2 diabetes prevalence and management in patients attending an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Service in Southeast Queensland over a twelve-year period.

I-HiNT: Intergenerational Health in the Northern Territory.

CARAT: CArdiovascular Risk assessment equations for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (CARAT) Study.

 

Speakers

Associate Professor Federica Barzi has over twenty-year experience in study design and data analysis of randomized clinical trials, large observational studies, and data linkage studies. She has co-authored over a hundred peer-reviewed journal articles with colleagues from various institutions and has secured, as a CI, over 24M in research funding since 2006.  She works with colleagues in epidemiology, public health and with clinicians across a large variety of disciplines, in particular cardiovascular and metabolic, and nutrition.

Dr Tahmina Begum is a medical graduate with a Master’s in Public Health.  She received her doctoral award from the University of Queensland in July 2022. Her PhD research project was on Caesarean section birth and its impact on maternal and offspring health in Australia. Prior to joining her PhD program, she had fourteen years of experience in obstetric patient management and implementation research in maternal and child health care in Bangladesh. She is a mixed method researcher with a major research interest in quality of health care improvement, non-communicable diseases prevention, management of health information system, and improving access to health services for the refugee and underprivileged population. She has gained some skills in meta-analysis, group-based trajectory modelling and longitudinal data management with published papers in peer reviewed journals. Research to policy communication is her prime focus and she’s had the privilege to serve on national technical advisory committees on quality of health care improvement in Bangladesh and in an international technical advisory group on the private sector in Health.

Christopher Sexton is a biostatistician with the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health. Christopher’s research has focused on socio-determinants of oral disease and equitable access to dental health care. He commenced his PhD in public oral health policy, specifically focusing on water fluoridation, research designs and childhood caries experience. Christopher is an expert in quantitative study design and analysis, and has worked collaboratively across multiple health disciplines.  As an early-career researcher, Christopher has contributed to research teams that have secured over 2M in competitive research funding.