Welcome Professor Gang Chen, newly appointed head of Cancer Health Services Research
Professor Gang Chen has joined the University of Melbourne as Professor, Cancer Health Services Research, and Head of the Cancer Health Services Research group. This position is an important joint appointment between the University of Melbourne Centre for Cancer Research, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.
Professor Chen is a health economist with training in medicine, management and health economics, with a strong interest in cancer research. His research primarily focuses on person-centred care, with a significant body of work into measuring the benefits of healthcare at both an economic and patient level.
"The burden of cancer is substantial and rapidly increasing globally. Health economics and health services research could contribute to the whole cancer control continuum," said Professor Chen
"It is my great honour to work with world-renowned multidisciplinary teams at the University of Melbourne, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the VCCC Alliance to implement and continuously improve data-driven value-based cancer care."
Professor Chen will also lead The Advanced Genomics Collaboration's (TAGC) Health Economics Platform, a partnership between the University of Melbourne and global biotech company Illumina, which enables the rapid translation of genomics into health services through treatment modelling to highlight improved clinical results and economic benefits.
Professor Sean Grimmond, director of the University of Melbourne Centre for Cancer Research and head of TAGC’s Clinical Genomics Platform, said Professor Chen was a celebrated appointment.
"We are delighted that Professor Chen has joined us at the University of Melbourne," said Professor Grimmond.
“His leadership in health economics and health services research will play a vital role in the translation and implementation of healthcare innovations for cancer patients and future generations, such as the use of genomics in personalised, patient-centred care.”
Professor Chen has led the health economic component of various successful international collaborative research projects on economic evaluations of cancer screening and surveillance, in colorectal and oesophageal cancer. He has designed and analysed patient preference studies to improve cancer screening and services for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers.
His recent research contributed to the development of a new method to reduce uncertainty in healthcare funding decisions using real-world data from prostate cancer treatments, and exploring methods to assess health utilities for economic evaluations in breast, oesophageal, gastric, and rectal cancer patients. Currently, he is exploring the value of measuring the broader subjective wellbeing of cancer patients, beyond health outcomes.
Prior to this appointment, Gang was an Associate Professor at the Centre for Health Economics (CHE), Monash University. He also worked at Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer and Flinders Health Economics Group (2012-2016) where he received the Flinders University Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Early Career Researchers.
In recent years, Professor Chen led a multi-institute team to develop a new preference-based Disability Wellbeing Index (DWI) for people with disability (a project funded by the National Disability Insurance Agency, NDIA). Gang also significantly contributed to the development of a new preference-based instrument, Quality of Care Experience - Aged Care Consumers (QCE-ACC), which has now been adopted by the Department of Health and Aged Care and has rolled out in residential aged care nationally.
Professor Chen is currently serving as the Vice President of the Australian Health Economics Society (AHES) (2022-present), and an Associate Editor for the Quality of Life Research (an official journal of the International Society of Quality of Life Research, ISOQOL) (2018-present). He is also a tenured member of the International Academy of Health Preference Research (IAHPR) and co-chaired the 14th Meeting of IAHPR in 2023.