The Hal Kendig Prize for the Best CEPAR PhD Thesis in 2020 has been awarded to Dr Md Mijanur Rahman for his PhD thesis on ‘Modelling Trajectories of Aged Care Use among Older Australian Women’, under the supervision of CEPAR Associate Investigator Professor Julie Byles and Associate Professor Liz Holliday.
“Mijan has undertook a detailed and comprehensive analysis of aged care data, applying a variety of sophisticated statistical techniques,” said his PhD supervisor Professor Julie Byles, Director of the Centre for Women's Health Research at the University of Newcastle.
“As well as applying himself to the statistical analyses, he made a concerted effort to meet with policymakers to discuss the significance and implications of his work. Mijan has my highest level of endorsement,” she said.
Dr Rahman analysed the patterns and transition dynamics of delivering aged care services according to clients’ changing needs over time to forecast the care needs for Australian women as they age.
His nomination noted that his PhD thesis impressed the examiners with being “an outstanding body of work of scholarly epidemiology with enormous practical implications” as well as a “detailed, thoughtful, comprehensive, meticulous” work.
“I feel very honoured to receive this prize, and I would like to thank my supervisors and the judging committee. It’s a great recognition for the important work my supervisors and I have done,” said Dr Rahman.
Since 2020, Dr Md Mijanur Rahman is a Research Fellow (Applied Statistics) at the Australian Health Services Research Institute (AHSRI) at the University of Wollongong, working with Professor Kathy Eager. He continues to collaborate with Professor Julie Byles to understand how women age well into their 90s, and the prospects for healthy ageing among women born during the post-war baby boom.
Dr Rahman has a multi-disciplinary research background in statistics, gerontology, clinical epidemiology and public health, and was awarded a PhD in Clinical Epidemiology and Medical Statistics from the University of Newcastle in 2020. Previously, he received an MSc in Gerontology from the University of Southampton (United Kingdom) and graduated in Statistics from the University of Rajshahi (Bangladesh). He has over 10 years’ experience in teaching statistical courses among undergraduate and graduate level students.
His research interests include modelling trajectories of health and aged care service use across later life; healthy ageing and health life expectancy; and health service outcomes and economic evaluation. He has expertise in applying advance statistical techniques to analyse complex longitudinal survey and linked health records, and has published 22 articles in top ranking, international peer-reviewed journals.
He received several awards during his PhD, including the Best Confirmation Award 2017 and the Best Publication Award 2019 from the School of Medicine and Public Health, The University of Newcastle, and the Arthur Everitt Award (student research) at the Australian Association of Gerontology Conference 2019.
PhD thesis: Rahman, Md Mijanur (2020): Modelling Trajectories of Aged Care Use among Older Australian Women. The University of Newcastle.
The Hal Kendig Prize is awarded annually in commemoration of the late Emeritus Professor Hal Kendig who was a CEPAR Chief Investigator and an important influence on the policy debate around ageing in Australia and internationally. Hal Kendig provided mentorship throughout his career and was especially active in mentoring PhD students.