The SPHeRE Network 11th Annual Conference
‘Translating research to health policy and system change’
will take place on Tuesday 4th March 2025 in RCSI
At the SPHeRE Network 11th Annual Conference we will examine how research can and does influence health policy and system reform.
We will showcase different aspects of population health, health services and policy research that address key policy and health system challenges resulting in positive health system change. The conference is an opportunity to hear from international and national leaders in the field, to understand how different disciplines, sectors and researchers can work together using high quality academic research to guide health system and policy decision-making which shape population health and health system reform.
Register here
Conference Keynote Speakers and Workshop Facilitators
Prof Lucy Gilson
University of Cape Town/London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Keynote Speaker
Prof Lucy Gilson holds the appointment of professor both at the University of Cape Town, South Africa and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. Her research broadly focuses on how to strengthen health systems to offer better public value, with particular concern for health equity.
She has a track record of research around: health policy implementation; decentralisation, district health systems and primary health care; user fees and financing issues; governance, leadership and management. As she has a particular interest in understanding health system actors’ decision-making, her work also considers how trust and power relations shape health system dynamics and complexity – recognising these relations as critical elements of health system software, and important in health system resilience.
Lucy’s postgraduate teaching focuses on health policy, health leadership, health systems and health policy and systems research. In South Africa, she engages closely with the Western Cape Department of Health, supporting health system development. She is the co-Editor in Chief of journal Health Policy and Planning.
Róisín Shortall
Co-Founder of the Social Democrats Party and Former TD for Dublin North-West
Keynote Speaker
Róisín Shortall is a co-founder of the Social Democrats and a former TD for Dublin North-West.
She was re-elected at every general election she contested since first winning a Dáil seat in 1992, giving her 32 years’ experience in national politics.
Róisín is a former primary school teacher with a degree in Economics and Politics, and throughout her career she has been particularly vocal on social justice issues, in all its forms, and good governance.
She is a former Minister of State at the Department of Health. In 2017, Róisín chaired the All-Party Committee on the Future of Healthcare which produced the Sláintecare reform plan for the Irish health service.
Róisín is passionate about accountability and fair distribution of resources.
Emeritus Prof Vera Morgan
Senior honorary research fellow in the School of Population and Global Health at The University of Western Australia (UWA) and Adjunct Professor in the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at the University of Tasmania.
Workshop Co-Facilitator: Becoming a Research Leader
Professor Morgan is a psychiatric epidemiologist with a special interest in studying schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Her cross-disciplinary approach to the study of psychotic illness melds psychiatric, genetic, physical health, sociological and criminological perspectives on cause and course of illness to help unravel the complex nature of these disorders and improve outcomes for affected people. Her current program of research focuses on: environmental and genetic contributions to the risk of schizophrenia; rethinking recovery in psychotic illness to improve outcomes; and addressing the very poor physical health profile of people with psychotic illness.
Professor Morgan has a very strong national presence and international profile as a psychiatric epidemiologist and was National Project Director and Convenor: Technical Advisory Group for Australia’s 2nd National psychosis survey. In 2020, she was awarded the most prestigious honour of the Society for Mental Health Research, the Founders Medal, for her research excellence and her leadership and contribution to mental health research in Australia and New Zealand. In 2022, the Society named one its top awards after her: The Vera Morgan Medal for Mental Health Epidemiology. In 2022, she received an Australasian Epidemiological Association (AEA) Lifetime Award and, in 2023, was made a Fellow of the AEA. Her professional roles have included, among others: President, Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research; Vice-President, AEA; Chair, Research Committee of the Mental Health Council of Australia; and Member, UWA Senate.
Professor Morgan has always taken a strong interest in research policy and its impact on research careers, including as: Member of the National Research Policy Committee of the National Tertiary Education Industry Union; Executive Officer for the UWA Project for the Advancement of Research Careers; and Vice-President of the UWA Researchers’ Association. In 2018, she received the AEA Mentoring Award recognising “a senior member of AEA who has made a significant contribution to mentoring early-career practitioners in the fields of epidemiology, biostatistics or related disciplines”.
Prof Rose Galvin
School of Allied Health, University of Limerick
Workshop Co-Facilitator: Becoming a Research Leader
Prof Rose Galvin is an Irish registered (CORU) Professor in Physiotherapy in the School of Allied Health (SAH). She completed her undergraduate physiotherapy degree, as well as her PhD at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her research broadly focuses on the identification and management of older adults living with frailty across care settings. In the past five years, she has been awarded in excess of €3.3 million as Principal Investigator (PI) and a further €5 million as co-applicant from a number of grant funding agencies. In 2020, she was awarded a highly prestigious €1.5 million Health Research Board of Ireland (HRB) Research Leader in recognition of her track record of leading health research that has delivered evidence to directly inform changes in Irish health policy and practice. She has supervised 21 students across allied health, nursing, pharmacy and medicine to PhD completion. She was Vice President of the Irish Gerontological Society (2019-2022) and is a founding member and co-director of the Ageing Research Centre at UL.
Prof Ian Underwood, FREng FRSE FSID
Professor of Electronic Displays at the University of Edinburgh (UoE)
Workshop Facilitator – Insights into Interdisciplinarity in Innovation
Ian Underwood is an award-winning researcher, innovator, and entrepreneur. An early highlight was a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Colorado that sparked his career-long enthusiasm in commercializing research outputs (and back country skiing). Since then, he has co-founded or supported seven start-up/spin out companies including one that he served in a full-time leadership capacity for ten years (including floating on AIM).
On returning to academia, he served as research institute leader (Micro & Nano Systems) for ten years, whilst developing new research interests including miniature sensors for applications including astrobiology, automotive, biomedicine, care & health, to visual perception. Externally he served for three years on the Scottish Science Advisory Council where he was lead author on an innovation report entitled “Making the most of our scientific excellence”. He currently serves as Publications Chair for the global Society for Information Display and as a mentor in the Enterprise Hub at the Royal Academy of Engineering.
In 2020 he was a key member of the small team that secured £20M in research funding from Legal & General plc to found the Advanced Care Research Centre (ACRC) at UoE. He proposed a pioneering pan-disciplinary PhD programme and leads the ACRC Academy that now hosts more than forty PhD students across all colleges of UoE. In 2024 he was a Red Bird Visiting Scholar at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology where, for six months, he enjoyed probably the world’s best view from an academic office, On 1st April he will become Director of the recently announced £27M EPSRC Research and Partnership Hub in Microscale Science and Technology to Accelerate Therapeutic Innovation (MicroTex).
But his personal favourite distinction is as design authority for “the world’s smallest colour tv screen”, as certified in the Guinness Book of World Records, 2004.