Draft:Adam Elshaug

Professor Adam Elshaug
Adam Elshaug in 2023
Born	1974 Mount Gambier
Citizenship	Australian
Alma mater	University of South Australia (B.A.), The University of Adelaide (B.Sc (Hons), M.P.H., Ph.D.)
Organization(s)	University of Adelaide (Department of Public Health), Harvard University (Department of Health Care Policy), University of Sydney (Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics), University of Melbourne (Centre for Health Policy, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health), Lown Institute (Brookline MA), The Brookings Institution (Washington DC), Commonwealth Fund (US)
Known for	Health services and policy research; health economics; health technology assessment; value in health care
Website	https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/873534-adam-elshaug

Adam Elshaug (born 1974 in Mount Gambier, Australia) is an Australian academic researcher and policy advisor. His research includes health system safety and efficiency, with a focus on measuring and reducing waste and low-value care for optimisation of value in healthcare delivery. Professor Elshaug is employed at the University of Melbourne as a professor and Chair in Health Policy with joint appointments in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health (MSPGH) and Melbourne Medical School. He also serves as Director of Melbourne School of Population and Global Health’s Centre for Health Policy, with more than 130 academic staff in 2024.

Education

Professor Elshaug attended the University of South Australia in Adelaide, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Psychology and Sociology. Subsequently, he moved to the University of Adelaide and earned Honours in Science (B.Sc.(Hons)) in Physiology. He then completed a Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) at the University of Adelaide, specialising in Health Policy and Epidemiology. Professor Elshaug went on to earn a Ph.D. in Health Economics and Policy also from the University of Adelaide.

Career

After obtaining his doctorate in 2007, Professor Elshaug was awarded a series of fellowships beginning in 2008 as a Hanson Institute Research Fellow based in the School of Public Health, University of Adelaide, one year later in 2009 becoming Senior Research Fellow. The University of Adelaide remained his home institution upon being selected as the 2010-11 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Washington DC, USA, mentored by Jean Slutsky, Dr. Carolyn Clancy, and Professor Alan Garber. Professor Elshaug was also awarded a NHMRC Sidney Sax Public Health (overseas) Fellowship, undertaken in the Department of Health Care Policy at the Harvard Medical School for 2011-13. From 2012-13, he was invited to be the Inaugural Visiting Fellow at the Commonwealth Fund in New York City.

Professor Elshaug returned to Australia in 2013 to become the Head, Value in Health Care Division (Lab), Associate Professor of Healthcare Policy, and was awarded the HCF Research Foundation Principal Research Fellowship, at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy at the University of Sydney. In 2016, he was promoted to full professor, awarded the HCF Research Foundation Professorial Research Fellowship, and became co-director of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy at the University of Sydney.

Professor Elshaug returned to the US for 2019-20 to become Visiting Fellow in the Economics Studies’ Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy at The Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Since 2014, he has maintained a relationship with The Lown Institute in Massachusetts as a non-resident Senior Fellow and has been economic and policy advisor to Cancer Australia.

In September 2020, Professor Elshaug moved to The University of Melbourne to become Professor and Chair in Health Policy and Director of the Centre for Health Policy in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health (MSPGH), with a joint Chair appointment in the Melbourne Medical School. He remains an Honorary Professor at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics] at the University of Sydney.

In the first three years of his appointment as Director at Melbourne University, the Centre for Health Policy grew from 35 to 130 academic staff and 50 PhD students.

Research and advocacy

Professor Elshaug's research focuses on enhancing safety and efficiency within health systems with a particular emphasis on measuring and mitigating waste, such as low-value care, to optimise value in health care utilising administrative health date. Engaging in an applied policy approach, Professor Elshaug collaborates directly with policy stakeholders. Together, they devise and enact reforms aimed at curbing waste and enhancing safety and value in healthcare. This includes crafting and assessing alternative payment models.

Professor Elshaug has held contiguous Ministerially-appointed advisory roles for the past 15 years to both Australian Labor and Liberal Coalition governments, appointed by multiple Federal Health Ministers and Deputy Secretaries to enact new review processes of all existing items on the Medicare Schedule through a safety, quality, and value lens.

Professor Elshaug is an advocate for reducing the use of low-value care. He has appeared before the Australian Senate Select Committee on Health to advocate change and has participated in media interviews, including an ABC ‘4 Corners’ 50- minute, nationally- televised special “Wasted” on low-value health care in Australia, newspapers, and radio. One of Elshaug’s 2014 co-authored papers featured in Atul Gwande’s 2015 New Yorker article ‘America’s epidemic of unnecessary care'.

As of March 2023, Professor Elshaug has collaborated to attract over AUD$145 million (USD$96.4 million) in research funding and has received over 200 invitations to address conferences, government, academic, insurance, and health technology assessment groups internationally.

Select contributions to policy

Professor Elshaug holds/has held several committee and board roles, including (select at 2024):  

• Elected as Australia’s representative member of the Scientific Council (SC) of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), WHO, 2024-2028
• Health Economics and Policy Advisor to Cancer Australia, which includes designing and overseeing economic modelling across the spectrum of cancer care (2014-current)
• Member of the Australian Health Department’s Scope of Practice Review (‘Unleashing the potential of our health workforce’) (2023-2024)
• Member of the Medicare Benefits Schedule Review Advisory Committee (MRAC) at the Australian Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care (2021-current)
• Member of the Expert Advisory Committee for Evidence-based Interventions (Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, NHS Clinical Commissioners (NHSCC), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), NHS England and Improvement) (2019-current)
• Member of the Australian Strengthening Medicare Taskforce at the Commonwealth Department of Health. Health Minister as the Chair of Taskforce (2022-2023)
• Member of the Victorian Perioperative Learning Health Network Advisory Group and; Quality and Safety Executive Council, Safer Care Victoria (current)
• Member of the MBS Review Taskforce, including its Principles and Rules Sub-Committee (2015-2020)
• Member of the Health Expert Working Group at the National Australian Broadband Advisory Council (2020-2022)
• Board Director at the New South Wales Bureau of Health Information (2017-2022)
• Elected Member of the Executive Committee of the Health Services Research Association of Australia and New Zealand (HSRAANZ) (2013-2017)

Awards and honours

In 2020, Elshaug earned the Health Services Research Association of Australia & New Zealand (HSRAANZ)’s Health Services and Policy Research Impact Award, recognizing significant contributions to health services research and policy application in Australia. In 2016, he was the inaugural recipient (group award) of Research Australia’s Data Innovation in Health and Medical Research Award. In 2022, Professor Elshaug was a finalist in Research Australia’s Health and Medical Research Awards – Health Services Research Award category.

Publications

Elshaug has published over 185 technical reports and peer reviewed articles with first author publications. His publications have appeared in the Lancet (co-lead of the 2017 Right Care Series), the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the Medical_Journal_of_Australia] (MJA). As of January 2024, he has received more than 7,000 citations, with a H-index of 38 and i-10 index of 65. Attesting to the applied policy approach to his work, as of January 2024 his work had garnered 328 citations across 240 policy documents, and 68 of those policy documents have been cited a further 625 times in 500 other policy documents.

Selection of peer-reviewed journal articles:

• Elshaug, A. G., Rosenthal, M. B., Lavis, J. N., Brownlee, S., Schmidt, H., Nagpal, S., Littlejohns, P., Srivastava, D., Tunis, S., Saini, V. (2017). "Levers for addressing medical underuse and overuse: achieving high-quality health care". The Lancet, 390(10090), 191–202. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(16)32586-7. PMID 28077228.
• Brownless, S., Chalkidou, K., Doust, J., Elshaug, A. G., Glasziou, P., Heath, II., Nagpal, S., Saini, V., Srivastava D., Chalmers, K., Korenstein D. (2017). "Evidence of overuse of medical services around the world". The Lancet, 390(10090), 156-168. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(16)32585-5. PMID 28077234.
• Badgery-Parker T, Pearson SA, Chalmers K, Brett J, Scott IA, Dunn S, Onley N, Elshaug AG. (2019). "Low-value care in Australian public hospitals: prevalence and trends over time". BMJ quality & safety, 28(3), 205-214. doi:10.1136/bmjqs-2018-008338. PMID 30082331.
• Schwartz, A. L., Landon, B. ., Elshaug, A. G., Chernew, M. E., McWilliams, J. M. (2014). "Measuring low-value care in Medicare". JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(7), 1067-1076. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.1541. PMID 24819824.
• Parkinson B, Sermet C, Clement F, Crausaz S, Godman B, Garner S, Choudhury M, Pearson SA, Viney R, Lopert R, Elshaug AG. (2015). "Disinvestment and value-based purchasing strategies for pharmaceuticals: an international review". Pharmacoeconomics, 33(9) 905-924. doi:10.1007/s40273-015-0293-8. PMID 26048353.
• Elshaug, A. G., Watt, A. M., Mundy, L., Willis, C. D. (2012). "Over 150 potentially low-value health care practices: an Australian study". Medical Journal of Australia, 197(10), 556-560. doi:10.5694/mja12.11083. PMID 23163685.
• Wade, V. A., Karnon, J., Elshaug, A. G., Hiller J. E. (2010). "A systematic review of economic analyses of telehealth services using real time video communication". BMC Health Services Research, 10, 1-13. doi:10.1186/1472-6963-10-233. PMID 20696073.
• Morgan DJ, Brownlee S, Leppin AL, Kressin N, Dhruva SS, Levin L, Landon BE, Zezza MA, Schmidt H, Saini V, Elshaug AG. (2015). "Setting a research agenda for medical overuse". Bmj, 351. doi:10.1136/bmj.h4534. PMID 26306661.
• Elshaug AG, Moss JR, Littlejohns P, Karnon J, Merlin TL, Hiller JE.(2009). "Identifying existing health care services that do not provide value for money". Medical Journal of Australia, 190(5). doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2009.tb02394.x. PMID 19296794.
• Elshaug AG, Hiller JE, Tunis SR, Moss JR. (2007). "Challenges in Australian policy processes for disinvestment from existing, ineffective health care practices". Australia and New Zealand health policy, 4(1). doi:10.1186/1743-8462-4-23. PMID 17973993.