Sarah Larkins

Dr Sarah Larkins is an experienced research leader, academic general practitioner and Professor of Health Systems Strengthening in the College of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University. Sarah has particular skills and experience in health services and workforce research and in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research and is an internationally recognised expert in social accountability in health professional education. Sarah is also a current member of the NHMRC Research Committee (2022-24) and Co-Director of the Anton Breinl Research Centre for Health Systems Strengthening, a centre of the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine.

To date, Sarah has over 170 published peer-reviewed journal articles and several book chapters, with an h-index of 35, more than 4100 citations and well over $97m in grant funding. This includes seven current NHMRC/MRFF grants as a CI (3 as CI A), investigating participatory strategies to strengthen  health services and recent grants from DESE and DFAT . She currently supervises 14 students at HDR level with 21 PhD completions. Other recent funding is from the CRC-NA, the Commonwealth Department of Health and the Department of Education.

Sarah's particular focus is on collaborating to improve equity in health care services for underserved populations, particularly rural, remote, Indigenous and tropical populations, and on training a health workforce with appropriate knowledge, attitudes and skills for this purpose. She is a past co-chair, Primary and Chronic Care Panel and Guideline Leadership Group Member of the National Living Evidence Guidelines for COVID-19, Director, Townsville Mackay Medicare Local and past member of the World Health Organisation Technical Working Group on Health Workforce Education Assessment Tools and the National Technical Advisory Group for Health Workforce Australia.

She currently serves as the Convenor, Clinical Leadership Group for the NHMRC-recognised Tropical Australian Academic Health Centre, and serves on Research Australia University Round Table and IRU Research Committee.