Paula Cronin

Paula Cronin is a Health Economist and part-time Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation (CHERE) within the Faculty of Health at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She has been employed at CHERE since 2006 and completed her PhD in health economics at UTS in 2018 with her thesis titled 'The Economic Impact of Childhood Developmental Language Disorder'. She also holds a Bachelor of Science and a Masters of Public Health.

Dr. Cronin serves as a member of the Cancer Research Economics Support Team (CREST), a national cancer-focused health economics service funded by Cancer Australia. She previously served on the Medical Services Advisory Committee Evaluation sub-committee (2017-2020) evaluating applications for new medical services to be funded on the Medicare Benefits Schedule. In 2012, she contributed to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Cost Recovery Review for the Commonwealth Department of Health.

Her primary research focuses on the economics of childhood, particularly speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). She has conducted extensive research on healthcare costs associated with developmental language disorders, cost-effectiveness of childhood interventions, and broader societal impacts beyond direct health outcomes. Her work spans health economics, public health policy, mental health services evaluation, obesity prevention, and pandemic response analysis.

Dr. Cronin's publication record shows consistent contributions to health economics literature with recent work examining productivity loss measurement methods, economic evaluations of obesity interventions, and mental health program evaluations. Her research demonstrates sophisticated application of economic evaluation techniques with particular attention to childhood populations and vulnerable groups across multiple sectors including healthcare, education, and criminal justice.

She has secured competitive research funding from NHMRC, Cancer Australia, and government departments for projects including the Strong Families Trial (preventing childhood obesity in at-risk families), economic evaluations of speech pathology services' impact on criminal justice outcomes, and evaluations of mental health recovery programs.