Professor Suetonia Palmer

Deputy Dean, University of Otago, Christchurch

Renal Physician
Rutherford Discovery Fellow 2014–2019
MB ChB, PhD, FRACP

Email suetonia.palmer@otago.ac.nz
Tel +64 3 3640 640

Twitter@SuetoniaPalmer

Professor Suetonia Palmer is a practising kidney specialist and Professor at the University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand. She is a Rutherford Discovery Fellow (2014-2019) and a L'Oreál For Women in Science Fellow (2013). She is a Deputy Dean at the University of Otago, Christchurch. She received a Gold Medal for Research in 2018. She is a qualified physician who received her Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 2006 and completed her PhD in Medicine in 2010. She received a postdoctoral fellowship to complete two years of study at study at Harvard Medical School until 2011.

Her work is investigating the effectiveness of therapies for improving the lives of people with kidney disease and how treatments can be delivered to address profound inequity based on ethnicity and socioeconomic opportunity. Her research methodologies include international collaborative randomized clinical trials, systematic reviews with network and conventional meta-analysis, qualitative explorations of patient and clinician experiences and perspectives, and large-scale epidemiological studies.

Suetonia was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship by the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2014 focusing on analytical technologies and qualitative research to improve the quality of clinical care. She is the Principal Investigator on Health Research Council grants for large trials in New Zealand and is a collaborator on global trials funded by the NHMRC in Australia.

She has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal papers including in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, JAMA and the Annals of Internal Medicine. She collaborates with academic clinicians and scientists in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Europe. She has attracted $30 million in research funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand, the Ministry of Business and Employment, and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). She is an editor for Cochrane Kidney and Transplant and the Transplantation journal. She is President Elect of the Australia and New Zealand Society of Nephrology and the Chair of the New Zealand Chapter of Nephrology. She is the Chair of the Steering Committee for the CARI Guidelines. She serves on the National Renal Advisory Board to the Ministry of Health and the Data Monitoring Core Committee for the Health Research Council.

Her core research interests and values are: helping emerging researchers, conducting high-quality clinical trials, exploring inequity through empirical research, and translating medical research into evidence-based clinical care and policy.

Roles

• President-elect, Australia and New Zealand Society of Nephrology
• Principal Investigator, The PHOSPHATE trial (HRC Funded)
• Principal Investigator, The TEACH-PD trial (HRC Funded)
• Member, National Renal Advisory Board
• Editor, Cochrane Kidney and Transplant
• Member, Māori Research Development Komiti, University of Otago, Christchurch
• Member, Data Monitoring Core Committee, HRC

Professional interests

• Equity in outcomes in treatment of kidney diseases
• Systematic review and network/conventional meta-analysis of treatments for long-term conditions
• Patient-centred outcomes in clinical research and as a measure of care quality
• Randomised controlled trials of treatment effectiveness and acceptability

Recent and current students

• Ms Tania Huria, PhD candidate (2015 – ) 'Created Equal' A case study investigating health system perspectives of health disparity. Funded by a Health Research Council of New Zealand Māori Research Fellowship
• Dr Amanda Landers, PhD candidate (2020 – ) Evaluating a model of care for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in their last year of life
• Dr Bhadran Bose, PhD candidate (2019 – ) University of Queensland
• Josie Nicholas-McAnergney, Summer Student Research 2018/2019 Ethnicity and assessment for kidney transplantation
• Harriet Gray, Summer Student Research 2017/2018 Reporting of Māori experiences of health services in qualitative research: Systematic review and meta-synthesis