Associate Professor Phyllis Lau

Position

Associate Professor, School of Medicine

Biography

Phyllis is Associate Professor at the Department of General Practice, Western Sydney University. She has extensive experience in in health service, Indigenous health, communication, interprofessional collaboration and chronic disease management research for the purpose of informing primary health care policy reform, particularly related to culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) and disadvantaged population groups.

Phyllis’ expertise is in mixed-methods research. She has experience in various study designs including randomised controlled trials, descriptive quantitative studies, qualitative studies (predominantly phenomenological design), interviews, focus groups, quantitative/qualitative/mixed-methods surveys including Delphi consensus surveys for management pathway development and case studies.

She has been awarded multiple research grants over the years including National health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) project grants and fellowship grants and Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) awards. She is or has been a Chief Investigator in 15 competitively-funded projects (including 2 NHMRC project grants) and the primary investigator in 9. She has also been a Chief investigator in 6 government agency-tendered or commissioned projects, and a Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) funded project. Over her career, she has 102 publications and achieved research income (as CI and AI) of almost AUD8.6M as of July 2024.

Phyllis has joint appointments at the University of Melbourne – Honorary Associated Professor at the Melbourne Dental School and Senior Lecturer at the Department of General Practice. Phyllis is also honorary research adviser for Hong Kong Tuen Mun Hospital Family Medicine Department, and a visiting academic at the University of Malaya. She holds active national advocacy and leadership roles. She is the Immediate Past President of the Australasian Association for Academic Primary Care (AAAPC) that advocates for high quality primary care research, education and practice. She is AAAPC Conference Chair 2024 and 2025. She is also a founding member of the Pharmacy Oral Health Alliance that advocates on a politically challenging platform for accessible oral health care through non-dental health professionals.

Research Interests

• Health service delivery
• Indigenous health
• Cultural sensitivity in health communication
• Interprofessional collaboration in care and research
• Chronic disease detection and management

Qualifications & Recognition

• PhD Monash University
• Graduate Diploma in Drug Evaluation and Pharmaceutical Sciences University of Melbourne
• Bachelor of Pharmacy Victorian College of Pharmacy

Research & Publications

• For a complete list of my publications please see my publications page (opens in a new window)
• View my researchgate profile (opens in a new window)

Contact Details