Setareh Rabbani

I am a health researcher specialising in health economics, program evaluation, and mixed-methods research, with a focus on improving equity and access in health systems. My interdisciplinary background — spanning pharmacy, economics, and public health — gives me a distinctive lens on how health systems operate and where they fall short.

At the Centre for the Business and Economics of Health, I contribute to the delivery and evaluation of national programs — including Palliative Care ECHO and Elder ECHO — through stakeholder engagement, implementation support, knowledge translation, and qualitative and quantitative research.

Prior to joining UQ, I led and contributed to public health and policy research projects, including national program evaluations that generated evidence to inform government decision-making. My academic work has examined the application of quasi-experimental methods in health policy evaluation, with a particular focus on how health equity is considered in research and practice.

My clinical and industry experience as a pharmacist — across direct patient care and pharmaceutical distribution — grounds my research in the practical realities of medication access and service delivery, and informs my understanding of health systems from the frontline.

Research Interests

Economic Evaluation and Allocative Efficiency: Examining how health systems can maximise value from existing resources — including medicines, services, and interventions — through cost-effectiveness analysis, rational utilisation, and evidence-informed priority setting.

Public Policy Evaluation: Assessing the health and equity impacts of public policies — including economic and social interventions — using rigorous evaluation methods, with an emphasis on generating evidence that informs decision-making across government and health systems.

Quasi-Experimental Methods: Interested in the application of natural experiments and quasi-experimental designs to evaluate public policies in real-world settings — particularly their potential to generate equity-sensitive evidence where randomisation is not feasible.