Dr Rachael Lawrence Lodge
Contact Details
University Links
- Position
- Operations Director / Research Fellow
- Department
- Department of Women's and Children's Health (Dunedin)
- Qualifications
- BSc(Hons) PhD
- Research summary
- Health Services and Systems
Research
Rachael is the Operations Director / Research Fellow for the New Zealand Mortality Review Data Group
Prior to her current role, Rachael was an Assistant Research Fellow with the Department of General Practice and Rural Health, Dunedin School of Medicine. She was part of the research team including Professor Tim Stokes, Dr Carol Atmore and Dr Erin Penno working on the NZ Health Research Council funded research project: Do Regional District Health Board groupings improve service integration and health outcomes?
Rachael was also involved in the research project exploring Outcomes of the Rural Hospital Medicine Training Programme with Dr Kati Blattner, Dr Rory Miller and Associate Professor Garry Nixon.
She previously worked as the Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) Officer for the Dunedin Medical School, facilitating participation of eligible staff across all eight departments in the PBRF process.
Raised in rural Southland and South Canterbury, Rachael has a particular interest in theoretical plant community ecology, mechanisms of co-existence, functional trait measurement and resource use. Both her PhD Alpha-niche differentiation in an herbaceous community, 2016, and BSc Honours thesis A habitat based test of the C-S-R theory, 1998 (University of Otago), involved quantitative explorations of co-existence theories. She remains involved in HerbDivNet – The Herbaceous Diversity Network, a global network of scientists studying patterns of diversity in herbaceous plant communities.
Although originally a plant community ecologist, Rachael has since adapted her research interests in system function, mechanisms and resource use into health services research and administration. Many years of corporate experience from her time working in insurance and tax in NZ and Australia has also translated well into this environment.
Publications
Radujković, D., Vicca, S., van Rooyen, M., Wilfahrt, P., Brown, L., Jentsch, A., … Lawrence Lodge, R., … Verbruggen, E. (2023). Consistent predictors of microbial community composition across spatial scales in grasslands reveal low context-dependency. Molecular Ecology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1111/mec.17178
Blattner, K., Miller, R. M., Lawrence-Lodge, R., Nixon, G., McHugh, P., & Pirini, J. (2021). New Zealand's vocational Rural Hospital Medicine Training Programme: The first ten years. New Zealand Medical Journal, 134(1529), 57-68. Retrieved from https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal
Blattner, K., Lawrence-Lodge, R., Miller, R., Nixon, G., McHugh, P., & Pirini, J. (2020). New Zealand's Rural Hospital Medicine training program at 10 years: Locality and career choice of the first graduate cohort [Short report]. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 28, 623-625. doi: 10.1111/ajr.12678
Pither, J., Fraser, L. H., Jentsch, A., Sternberg, M., Zobel, M., Cahill, J., … Lawrence-Lodge, R., … Zupo, T. (2016). Response to comment on "Worldwide evidence of a unimodal relationship between productivity and plant species richness". Science, 351(6272), 457-b. doi: 10.1126/science.aad8019
Fraser, L. H., Pither, J., Jentsch, A., Sternberg, M., Zobel, M., Askarizadeh, D., … Lawrence-Lodge, R., … Wilson, J. B., & Zupo, T. (2015). Worldwide evidence of a unimodal relationship between productivity and plant species richness. Science, 349(6245), 302-305. doi: 10.1126/science.aab3916
Radujković, D., Vicca, S., van Rooyen, M., Wilfahrt, P., Brown, L., Jentsch, A., … Lawrence Lodge, R., … Verbruggen, E. (2023). Consistent predictors of microbial community composition across spatial scales in grasslands reveal low context-dependency. Molecular Ecology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1111/mec.17178
Journal - Research Article
Blattner, K., Miller, R. M., Lawrence-Lodge, R., Nixon, G., McHugh, P., & Pirini, J. (2021). New Zealand's vocational Rural Hospital Medicine Training Programme: The first ten years. New Zealand Medical Journal, 134(1529), 57-68. Retrieved from https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal
Journal - Research Article
Fraser, L. H., Pither, J., Jentsch, A., Sternberg, M., Zobel, M., Askarizadeh, D., … Lawrence-Lodge, R., … Wilson, J. B., & Zupo, T. (2015). Worldwide evidence of a unimodal relationship between productivity and plant species richness. Science, 349(6245), 302-305. doi: 10.1126/science.aab3916
Journal - Research Article
Roe, C. M., Parker, G. C., Korsten, A. C., Lister, C. J., Weatherall, S. B., Lawrence Lodge, R. H. E., & Wilson, J. B. (2012). Small-scale spatial autocorrelation in plant communities: The effects of spatial grain and measure of abundance, with an improved sampling scheme. Journal of Vegetation Science, 23(3), 471-482. doi: 10.1111/j.1654-1103.2011.01375.x
Journal - Research Article
Lawrence Lodge, R. H. E., Anderson, B. J., de Groot, A., Bill, A., McQueen, A. A. M., Steel, J. B., Mistral, M., Mason, N. W. H., & Wilson, J. B. (2007). Spatial autocorrelation in plant communities: Vegetation texture versus species composition. Ecography, 30, 801-811.
Journal - Research Article
Steel, J. B., Wilson, J. B., Anderson, B. J., Lodge, R. H. E., & Tangney, R. S. (2004). Are bryophyte communities different from higher-plant communities? Abundance relations. Oikos, 104, 479-486.
Journal - Research Article
Blattner, K., Lawrence-Lodge, R., Miller, R., Nixon, G., McHugh, P., & Pirini, J. (2020). New Zealand's Rural Hospital Medicine training program at 10 years: Locality and career choice of the first graduate cohort [Short report]. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 28, 623-625. doi: 10.1111/ajr.12678
Journal - Research Other
Pither, J., Fraser, L. H., Jentsch, A., Sternberg, M., Zobel, M., Cahill, J., … Lawrence-Lodge, R., … Zupo, T. (2016). Response to comment on "Worldwide evidence of a unimodal relationship between productivity and plant species richness". Science, 351(6272), 457-b. doi: 10.1126/science.aad8019
Journal - Research Other