Benjamin Jones
Contact information
Research groups
Colleges
Benjamin Jones
DPhil Student of Clinical Medicine
Education
- Doctor of Medicine (MD), University of New South Wales 2021
- Master of Health Leadership and Management, University of New South Wales, 2022
- Bachelor of Medical Studies, University of New South Wales, 2018
- Graduate, Australian Institute of Company Directors, 2019
Previous Experience
Ben is an Australian doctor who completed his MD and a Masters of Health Leadership and Management in Sydney. Ben is an advocate for the elimination of rheumatic heart disease. His First Nations community in Australia is Murrawarri.
Ben is supported by a Rhodes Scholarship and Nuffield Department of Medicine Prize Studentship to train as an implementation scientist within the Health Systems Collaborative team.
Throughout 2024, Ben worked as a doctor in Darwin, the major hospital for patients with rheumatic heart disease in Australia.
Ben also worked as a clinical research assistant with clinical trials team at the Oxford Pandemic Sciences Institute.
Thesis
Title: The implementation of echocardiographic screening for rheumatic heart disease using task-sharing in remote First Nations Australian communities.
My thesis is implementation science and explores the translation of a rheumatic heart disease (RHD) screening program from research into service delivery. I will use theory-based evaluation approaches such as Theory of Change and a realist evaluation (both recommended in The Australian Government's Indigenous Evaluation Strategy) to understand what implementation strategies assist the integration of a screening program in remote Indigenous Australian communities, under what condition they work and why. I will also explore if this task-sharing model can be utilised as a broader health workforce solution to Australia's rural health workforce challenges. To develop skills in this methodology I did pilot work co-designing a Theory of Change with teams in India and Indonesia. My fieldwork will be in Australia and East-Timor evaluating the NEARER SCAN study which is a hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial.
Ben recently presented the initial findings from this work at the World Congress of Paediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery in Washington D.C and the inaugural World Congress for RHD in Abu Dhabi.
Ben tell us about his DPhil, on implementing rheumatic heart disease screening in remote First Nations communities in Australia by training local healthcare workers to use handheld ultrasound devices to take images of the heart.
This trailer for the rheumatic heart disease documentary, Take Heart, speaks about the community-led scanning program Ben is working on for his DPhil.
Ben tells us about his DPhil project, titled 'The implementation of echocardiographic screening for rheumatic heart disease using task-sharing in remote Indigenous Australian communities.'. This talk was recorded during NDM-CGHR meeting on 4th October 2023