QUALITY OF LIFE
AGED CARE CONSUMERS
QUALITY OF CARE EXPERIENCE
AGED CARE CONSUMERS
RESEARCH TEAM
Current Research Team
Professor Julie
Ratcliffe
Professor Julie Ratcliffe leads the Health and Social Care Economics Group in the Caring Futures Institute, College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University and is the current holder of an NHMRC Investigator Leadership Fellowship (2025-2029). Julie also holds an Honorary Professorial appointment in the School of Medicine and Population Health at the University of Sheffield, UK. She is an experienced health economist and an internationally recognized leader in economic evaluation and the measurement and valuation of health and quality of life outcomes to inform aged care and health system decision making. During her career, she has been a Chief Investigator on over 60 multi-disciplinary research grants and co-authored over 300 peer reviewed journal papers. Julie is the inaugural health economist member of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) Council on Economic Policy and the immediate Past President of the Australian Health Economics Society.
Associate Professor Rachel Milte
A/Professor Rachel Milte has leadership of the program of economic evaluation alongside clinical and pragmatic trials for the Caring Futures Institute at Flinders University. Currently Rachel is an ARC Industry Fellow funded to focus on developing communication-accessible versions of quality assessment tools for use in aged care. Rachel regularly undertakes economic evaluation particularly focusing on multicomponent interventions aiming to improve the health and quality of life people with complex multimorbidity, frail older adults and people rehabilitating post-surgery or acute health events. Her research into the costs and benefits of alternative models of residential aged care has promoted the importance of person-centred outcome measurement in planning and assessing aged care services. In the past 5 years, she has received >$15M in research funding across the NHMRC, ARC and MRFF Funding programs. She has already produced a strong publication record as a mid-career researcher, with 80 peer-reviewed publications, and 6 industry research reports (last 5 years). She has been cited 2,107 times (Google Scholar).
Associate Professor Jyoti Khadka
Jyoti Khadka is an Associate Professor in Health Economics and Outcomes Research in the Caring Futures Institute, College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University. Jyoti has a multidisciplinary background in vision sciences, psychometrics, health services research, aged care, and health economics. An accomplished academic researcher, Jyoti specialises in the development and evaluation of person-centred outcomes, as well as in methodological research on how these outcomes (e.g., quality of life, experience, and well-being) are best measured and valued in health and social care settings, including for health economics assessments. To date, he has developed, validated, and implemented 15 different tools for measuring quality of life and patient experience across vision, aged care, and health systems. In recognition of his significant research contributions, Jyoti was listed among the top 2% of scientists globally in 2023 and 2024, according to the Stanford University–Elsevier standardized citation index.
Dr Jenny Cleland
Dr Jenny Cleland is a Research Fellow in the Health and Social Care Economics group, College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University. Jenny is a mixed methods researcher and has over 20 years of experience working in research at universities both in the UK and in Australia. Jenny was awarded her PhD from Flinders University in 2022 which was part of an ARC Linkage grant. Her PhD focused on developing a preference-based quality of life instrument with older people for economic evaluation in aged care. The instrument (QOL-ACC) is now part of the National Quality Indicators Program in residential aged care alongside the QCE-ACC which she was also involved in developing. Jenny is funded by the NHMRC investigator grant awarded to Professor Julie Ratcliffe and is leading the qualitative stream of work to develop, validate and implement the QOL-ACC and the QCE-ACC in sub-acute healthcare settings with older people.
Dr Jia Song
Dr Jia Song is an early career researcher in the Health and Social Care Economics Group, College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University. She holds a PhD in Health Economics and Econometrics from the University of Adelaide and an MSc in Statistics from Uppsala University, Sweden. Her work focuses on applying econometric modelling, clinical trial evaluation, and discrete choice experiments to aged care research. She has extensive experience working with data on older people, dementia patients, and Indigenous communities. Jia has investigated preference heterogeneity in how different population groups value high-quality aged care and contributed to understanding the link between care experience and quality of life using the QCE-ACC and QOL-ACC instruments. Her work provides valuable insights for enhancing aged care services and supports to the program's objectives.
Dr Diana Khanna
Dr Diana Khanna is an early career researcher in the Health and Social Care Economics Group, College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University. Diana has expertise in economic evaluations alongside clinical and pragmatic trials, Discrete Choice Experiments and econometric models. Her PhD, funded through the MRFF multi-centre grant, focused on the economic and methodological aspects of measuring health-related quality of life in children. She is currently working as a Research Associate under A/Professor Rachel Milte, applying her expertise to research that informs healthcare decision-making and health service delivery.
Kiri Lay
Kiri is a mixed methods researcher with an interest in the structures and practices that support the care of vulnerable groups. Her postgraduate research project focused on the role of informal community care in creating healthy communities. She is a current PhD candidate exploring how to best include service users’ perspectives and preferences in the development and evaluation of care services and interventions. Kiri’s thesis will focus on the feasibility and content and construct validity of the QOL-ACC in older users of residential aged care, and sub-acute health services with a particular focus on the impact of cognitive impairment on self-report feasibility.
Digisie Jemere
Digisie is a PhD candidate in Health Economics at the Caring Futures Institute, Flinders University, supported by an ARC Linkage Fellowship scholarship. She holds a Masters degree in business administration (MBA) from the University of Gondar, Ethiopia, and a Masters in European Microfinance from Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. Her research focuses on developing quality of care and quality of life measurement instruments for older people living with dementia and cognitive impairment in long-term care settings. Her primary research interest is supporting the engagement of older people and people with dementia in self-reporting outcome and experience measures within the health and aged care systems.
Thiviyah Raman
Thiviyah holds a BSc in Psychology and BA in Anthropology from The University of Texas at Arlington, USA and an MA in Mental Health Counselling from the University of Indianapolis, USA. She is currently a PhD Candidate at Flinders University, undertaking her research as part of the NHMRC Investigator Grant. Her research focuses on developing methods for assessing self-completion reliability on quality of life (QoL) measures among older people with cognitive impairment. She has clinical experience working with vulnerable populations and has also worked in the finance industry in Singapore. Within the research team, Thiviyah contributes to research on inclusive assessment approaches, drawing on her background in mental health, research, and cross-sector experience.
Hurjehan Kadernani
Hurjehan holds a Bachelor of Dental Sciences (BDS) from India, a Master’s degree in Dental Public and Primary Health from The University of Western Australia, and a Master’s in Health Administration from India. She has diverse experience working in both clinical and non-clinical settings across Kenya, India, and Australia. Hurjehan is currently a PhD Candidate at Flinders University, undertaking her research as part of the NHMRC Investigator Grant. Her research focuses on the development and validation of the QCE-ACC in geriatric palliative and end of life settings. Before commencing her PhD, Hurjehan worked as a research assistant in Health Management at Flinders University for one year, gaining skills in data collection, data analysis, and conducting literature reviews. As a trained dentist, she has substantial experience communicating with older adults and possesses strong interpersonal and communication skills.
Previous Research Team Members
Dr Claire Hutchinson – Flinders University
Associate Professor Ruth Walker – Flinders University
Associate Professor Billingsley Kaambwa – Flinders University
Dr Sheela Kumaran – The University of New South Wales
Professor Gang Chen – The University of Melbourne
Professor Ian Cameron – The University of Sydney
Dr Candice McBain – The University of Sydney
Professor Emily Lanscar – The Australian National University
Dr Junhi Li – The Australian National University
Kate Swaffer – Dementia Alliance International