Hazel Dalton

Background

About Hazel Dalton

Hazel is Senior Research Fellow of Rural Public Health (Health Services), Rural Health Research Institute, Charles Sturt University, in Orange. From 2016-2022, she was Research Leader and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle’s Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health (CRRMH). She remains an Honorary Senior Lecturer with the University of Newcastle. She has managed research across innovation in health service provision (planning, co-design, evaluation, case studies), including integrated care; mental health promotion, including collaborative approaches to community wellbeing; and rural suicide prevention. Dr Dalton has worked with primary health networks and local health services across health service evaluation, low-intensity mental health services, stepped care model co-design and evaluation, and regional mental health planning. She was a facilitator for the International Foundation for Integrated Care Australia (IFICA), a collaborative network aimed at advancing integrated care in Australia (2015-2021). Hazel is interested in translation and communication of research and providing evidence to support programs and inform policy. She has extensive research experience across university and health sectors, with skills in conceptual modelling, and quantitative and qualitative research approaches. In 2012, Hazel relocated from Adelaide to Orange with her family in 2012 to support her husband Matt Atallah’s winemaking career and building of the Atallah Wines business. This move led to a major career pivot from laboratory-based discovery science, investigating molecular regulatory systems, to that of mixed methods research exploring rural mental health and integrated care. This involved taking research-support, management and capacity building roles until her appointment as Research Leader at the University of Newcastle’s Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health in August 2016. Life beyond work has meant a total of six years and ten months of research career disruption, with non-research active roles and three years and ten months in active carer duties (two curious and capable daughters).