Dr Sarah Larkins is an academic general practitioner, Associate Professor in General Practice and Rural Medicine and Director of Research at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University. She has particular skills and experience in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research and health services and workforce research. She is also Co-Director of the Anton Breinl Research Centre for Health Systems Strengthening.
Sarah has more than 40 published papers to date and well over $2m in grant funding including two current NHMRC grants, investigating rural community participation in oral health service development and case studies of Indigenous primary health care centres able to improve dramatically in response to CQI activites. She currently supervises 11 students at Doctoral level and 3 Honours students. Methodologically her strengths are in the use of participatory/action research methodologies and mixed methods to design, implement and evaluate new programs or health services.
Sarah's particular focus is on collaborating to improve equity in health care services for underserved populations, particularly rural, remote and Indigenous populations, and on training a health workforce with appropriate knowledge, attitudes and skills for this purpose. She is a current Director, Townsville Mackay Medicare Local (TMML) and member of the National Technical Advisory Group for Health Workforce Australia and the World Health Organisation Technical Working Group on Assessment Tools in Health Professional Education.