Professor Rachael McDonald

PhD candidate and honours supervision

Higher degrees by research

Accredited to supervise Masters & Doctoral students as Principal Supervisor.

PhD topics and outlines

Addressing barriers to health and health care for people with intellectual disabilities: People with intellectual disabilities face serious health inequities that should be preventable.  The reasons for this are unclear, but recent work has demonstrated that this group die much earlier than their non disabled peers. This body of work involves investigation of cause of ill health and lack of access to appropriate and vigorous healthcare as well as investigations to improve this.

Cause and treatement of Osteoporosis in Women with Disability: This project works with key industry partners and government agencies to investigate and design both data collection tools and potential interventions for people (particularly women) with disabilities.  

Economic Benefits of Universal Design and Access for people with disabilities: With the advent of the NDIS, people with disablities will have opportunities for equitable access to social and economic participation.  This research topic investigates the economic and other advantages of accessibility for persons living with disability, as well as interventions to ensure that this occurs.  

Sensor based technologies to measure activity and particiaption of wheeled mobility users: People who use wheeled mobility often face environmental and other barriers to participating in the community, work and the like.  This project seeks to find objective measurements using sensor based technologies to design interventions to improve this.

Using new technologies to enhance participation for peope with intellectual disabilities: The emergence of smart phone and other technologies enable a new way to enhance participation and social inclusion for people with disabilities; yet the potential and effectiveness has not been objectively measured.

Honours

Available to supervise honours students.

Honours topics and outlines

Economic Evaluation of Accessible Environments : People with disabilities face barriers to social and economic participation.  One way to influence this is to measur the social and economic benefits to society of universal access. 

Global Priorities in Assistive Technology: The World Health Organisation has identified a global research agenda in assistive technology for people with disabilities.  This project seeks to investigate how these priorities resonate with people with disablities, and identify gaps and interventions.

Women with Disability and Menopause: Working with industry partners, including government agencies and disability service providers, this project aims to discover gaps in services and propose education, intervention and review practices for supporting women with disabilities through this life stage.