Researcher biography
A/Profesor Kathryn Panaretto is a Public Health Physician with a background in primary care with major interests in Indigenous health & improving health service delivery. She is a vocationally registered GP & member of the RACGP, completing an MPH at James Cook University in 2001 & Fellowship (Australian Faculty of Public Health Medicine) in 2006. For the past 17 years she has been working in Indigenous health. She is currently a Population Health Medical Officer & Clinical Director, Queensland Aboriginal & Islander Health Council (QAIHC) & the National Aboriginal & Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO). Prior to these appointments she was the Medical Director, Townsville Aboriginal & Islander Health Services (TAIHS), 2000-07. Under her leadership TAIHS became one of Australia’s largest & leading AMSs. CI Panaretto was instrumental in establishing comprehensive primary health care at TAIHS with a major focus on preventative health care & led the development of the Maternal & Child health project, Mums and Babies program, which attracted national attention.
Over the past 5 years Kathryn has participated in Indigenous Health Information/ICT & Quality Improvement initiatives with QAIHC. QAIHC supports 26 Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services across Qld & has actively developed health information solutions to enable it to monitor service performance in the clinical domain. In this work she helped QAIHC develop a number of key strategic partnerships with organisations such as General Practice Queensland, the George Institute, Baker IDI, PEN Computing systems, AIHW & the NHPA. She has also been involved in a number of research projects, 3 as CI with the NHMRC at TAIHS & QAIHC. This work has led to her appointment at the national level to lead work with Aboriginal Primary Health care services. CI Panaretto brings these extensive skills & platforms to fundamentally support the CRE Surveillance & Primary Care research streams for improving CKD Health Services.