Professor Karen Grimmer-Somers

Karen Grimmer-Somers is Professor of Allied Health in the School of Health Sciences and is the Director of the Centre for Allied Health Evidence

Centre for Allied Health Evidence

Smartplay

National Institute of Clinical Studies

South Australian Dept of Health

• Professor Grimmer-Somers coordinates and teaches in the postgraduate research course REHB 5102. This course is run in a three week summer school, commencing mid Jan each year. Karen Grimmer-Somers supervises Honours students, Masters by Research and PhD students. She will be not be available to take on any new students after Dec. 2010.
• Professor Grimmer-Somers' teaching interests are in research design, statistics, epidemiology, evidence-based practice, systems evaluation and project planning.
• Professor Grimmer-Somers has receieved a number of UniSA awards for excellence in teaching in research, related to research projects conducted with students and other staff in the School of Health Sciences, and also to her supervision of higher research degbree students.
• Professor Grimmer-Somers is an adjunct professor at the University of Stellenbosch, Capetown, South Africa, and an honorary professor at University of Santo Tomas, Manila. She is adjunct faculty at Nova Southeast University, Florida.

Karen is a member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association and the Public Health Association of Australia.

Karen is an associate editor on the Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice. She is a member of the international editorial board for the Canadian Journal of Physiotherapy and Physiotherapy Research International. She is a regular reviewer for ten physiotherapy / allied health/ public health journals around the world.

Karen spent 19 years in clinical practice in Tasmania, in both the public and private systems, before moving to Adelaide to take up a research fellowship at the School of Physiotherapy, University of South Australia in 1995.

Karen completed her undergraduate physiotherapy degree (B. Phty) at University of Queensland in 1975, her Masters of Medical Science degree from University of Tasmania in 1989, and her PhD (Epidemiology)from Menzies Centre, University of Tasmania in 1996. Her PhD thesis explored population-based research into headache and posture, and questionned many of the traditional ways of physiotherapeutic measurement. Her interest in health service quality lead her to complete the Certificate of Health Economics from Monash University in 1997.

At the University of South Australia, she worked initially as the Senior Research Fellow in the School of Physiotherapy, and in 1996 she assumed the directorship of the Centre for Allied Health Research, a position which she currently still holds. She was promoted to Professor of Allied Health, School of Health Sciences in January 2005. Karen's particular areas of primary research interest are in discharge planning systems, program evaluation and adolescent spinal health.

• Karen's interests are diverse. They include the philosophy and practice of implementation of evidence, adolescent musculoskeletal health and its public health implications, posture and its determinants, allied health service quality and outcome measurement, discharge planning from hospitals and the systems which underpin good practices.
• Karen has been a supported researcher at UniSA every year since 1997.
• Karen directs the research team working from the Centre for Allied Health Evidence, City East Campus. This group of visionary researchers pursue diverse research interests of their own, although all the research is linked by the desire to improve allied health teaching and clinical practices.

I am able to provide media comment in the following areas of expertise:

Discipline: Health, Social Sciences

• Quality management in allied health services, outcome measurements, cost effectiveness of allied
• health services, posture and pain