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Spotlight on:

Associate Professor Mei Ling Yap

Radiation Oncologist and Clinician Researcher
Head of Cancer Program, the George Institute for Global Health
Lead of Collaboration for Cancer Outcomes, Research and Evaluation (CCORE) Ingham Institute

Can you tell us a little about yourself? 

I am a radiation oncologist based in South-Western Sydney Local Health District, where I have the privilege of working with people who have been diagnosed with lung or breast cancer and their families. My research interest is in equity in access to cancer care, both within Australia and globally.

You were awarded Health Systems Research Theme grant funding in 2024, what were you able to achieve with this funding? 

The super exciting thing to come out of the Health Systems Research (HSR) Collaborative Seed Grant is that it has built a new collaboration, and this collaboration has now been successful in being awarded a NSW Cancer Institute Aboriginal Cancer Research grant, led by an Assoc Prof Julieann Coombes, who is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researcher at the George Institute for Global Health. While the project is different in methods and focus (it's more around cultural safety training of oncology staff at SWSLHD), the HSR grant was the first time that Julieann's team and my team/SWSLHD had worked together - and I think it lay some nice foundations for this next project that Julieann will be leading, together with myself and a few others who were on the HSR seed grant.

Looking ahead, what do you see as the potential impacts of your research on future health systems? 

My hope is that future health systems will be easier to navigate, less fragmented and of minimal burden and financial cost to patients. I hope to help create this future health system, through policy impactful health systems research, focusing on cancer.

Would you mind sharing something personal about yourself? Or a recommendation?

In my spare time, I train in taekwondo – this really helps blow off steam when facing the ups and downs of research life!