Founders of the alliance

  • Dr Danielle Muscat

    FOUNDER

  • A/Prof Rosie Nash

    FOUNDER

  • A/Prof Shandell Elmer

    FOUNDER

  • Prof Kirsten McCaffery

    FOUNDER

  • Founder

    A/Prof Danielle Muscat is an Executive Member and Translational Research Lead of the Sydney Health Literacy Lab at the University of Sydney. She is also the Director of Research for the NSW Health Statewide Health Literacy Hub; a state-wide collaborative centre for health literacy research translation and collaboration. Through these roles, A/Prof Muscat leads an innovative program of translational research focused on the development, evaluation and scale-up of interventions to improve health literacy at both community and systems levels.

  • Founder

    Dr Rosie Nash is a registered pharmacist and senior lecturer in public health at the University of Tasmania. She specialises in health promotion interventions and is Australia’s foremost researcher in children’s health literacy.  Rosie has expertise in research and evaluation design, co-design and community-based research. She co-founded HealthLit4Kids and established the University of Tasmania’s cross-institutional Health Literacy & Equity research group.  In 2020, Rosie was awarded a prestigious Winston Churchill Fellowship to explore Global perspectives on children’s health literacy: intersections between health, education and community.  

  • Founder

    A/Prof Shandell Elmer is an Associate Professor within the School of Nursing, College of Health and Medicine, University of Tasmania, Australia. Shandell draws upon her work in a variety of settings including community nursing, health promotion, and general practice to inform the design of her research and curriculum. A strong advocate for primary health care, Shandell's work focuses on health literacy to improve the way that health service providers identify and respond to health literacy needs.

  • Founder

    Professor Kirsten McCaffery is an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow at the Sydney School of Public Health, the University of Sydney. She has a national and international reputation in shared decision making, health literacy and the assessment of psychosocial outcomes. She is Director of Policy and Prevention at the School of Public Health and Director of the Sydney Health Literacy Lab, a group of 35 researchers and students, at the University of Sydney.