Siân Slade

To understand the mechanisms enabling patients to navigate healthcare.

Sian Slade

Siân Slade is a UK-trained pharmacist, MPH, MBA, GAICD qualified and PhD candidate in global health systems and Enterprise Fellow (Honorary) at the University of Melbourne. With formative career years as a pharmacist in community and hospital, Siân joined the pharmaceutical industry in clinical development in the 1990s and spent 25 years in leadership roles (in research, development and commercialisation) based out of the UK, France, the USA and Australia. Most recent roles included leading global teams to design, develop and deliver global and regional capabilities in content, knowledge and medical information.

Siân’s interest in global health systems is based on being part of the collaborative global change working in HIV/AIDS in the 1990s and the Master of Public Health (MPH) subject comparative health system. The impetus behind Siân's Capstone Research on patient navigation in healthcare with Professors Barbara McPake and Peter Brooks, and now PhD was seeing a friend navigating cancer in the Australian context.  Building on this, Siân’s international doctoral research in Australia and Wales is researching the mechanisms that enable patients to navigate healthcare. This is a collaboration between the University of Melbourne and Swansea University/Welsh Value in Health Centre working with the South East Metro Health Service Partnership and the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board.

Siân has written in public health media for Pearls and Irritations, Croakey, the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association and the Consumer Health Forum. She has also written a book chapter, A People Approach to Managing Knowledge on her experiences of leading global change in this discipline in the pharmaceutical industry.

Based on running two successful webinars, “Mind the Gap: NavigatingHealth” in 2021, Siân set up #NavigatingHealth, a social impact project and chairs the National Network with the Australian Disease Management Association. For the past year #NavigatingHealth has run or participated in a number of collaborative events, for example in Canberra as well as global webinars working with international partners such as the American Cancer Society and others.

Siân is a Board Director at the Leukaemia Foundation, LiverWELL and The Bridge Inc in Australia and Co-Chair of the International Social Prescribing Collaborative Steering Group working with colleagues globally to develop this capability to bridge health, social and voluntary sectors. Siân is a past Chair of the Precision Health Community of Practice at the Australasian Institute of Digital Health and past Co-Chair of the Graduate Research Association of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.

PhD Supervisors:

Professor Barbara McPake

Professor Peter Brooks

Professor Adam Elshaug

Mr James Sanderson

Follow  Sian's Research

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