Stuart Wark

Background:

Stuart Wark is currently the Deputy Head of School at the School of Rural Medicine. He has a longstanding focus on developing better models of healthcare support in rural areas, working across both industry and academia. His contribution to the field was recognised with Churchill (2012) and Endeavour Fellowships (2018), supporting him to gain a greater understanding of overseas models of healthcare provision. For more than 30 years, he has worked with individuals, families and healthcare providers and has established relationships between end-users and researchers through collaborative projects that resulted in mutually-beneficial outcomes. This background provides him with a comprehensive grounding in the existing and emerging issues facing rural people. He has successfully led recent small and large community-embedded projects, and has extensive experience at effectively translating healthcare research into practice. 

Recent (past five years) contribution to healthcare:

Stuart continues to work closely with rural healthcare providers across Australia to practically implement the recommendations of his work, and particularly in relation to individuals with intellectual disability and/or cognitive impairment. He has closely collaborated with services in rural NSW for the past fifteen years to incorporate his research recommendations to transform program services. These ongoing partnerships have resulted in both revised and completely new models of care that better meet the needs of rural people. Since 2021, he has authored 40 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters (Google Scholar: h-index of 24; i-10 index of 36) and is ranked in the top 1% of researchers world-wide in the fields of both disability and rurality (https://scholargps.com/scholars/78348935623653/stuart-wark). He is an active Higher Degree Research supervisor and has supervised five healthcare PhDs to completion since 2021. 

Prizes, awards, honours: 

Stuart's research has been recognised at a national and international level, including the Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability Annual Research Award and the Australasian Society for Intellectual Disability [ASID] National Research Award. He currently has over $5 million as Chief Investigator in category one grants. He was awarded the 2021 UNE Alumni Award for a “significant lifetime contribution in supporting and caring for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities” and an Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning in 2022.

Peer review involvement:

Stuart has been a regular assessor for Australian Research Council (including for Future Fellowships, Linkage, Discovery Early Career, and Discovery rounds) and as an expert member of NHMRC Medical Research Future Fund Assessment Committees. He is an Associate Editor for Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability and has over 350 peer reviews in Web of Science.

Current service to the field:

Stuart is National Vice-President for the Australasian Society for Intellectual Disability [ASID] (2024-current), Chair of the National ASID Journals Committee (2023-current), and an ongoing ASID NSW/ACT committee member since 2018.