DrJoseph (Mark) Thomas

Dr Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation (CHERE) at the University of Technology Sydney.

Dr Thomas is a critical applied economist specialising in public health policy evaluation, the promotion of health equity and health systems development in national conflict settings. Throughout his career, which has included extensive fieldwork in Indigenous Australian communities and the occupied Palestinian territory, Dr Thomas has developed a strong capacity to navigate culturally and linguistically diverse settings and to collaborate effectively with a diverse range of stakeholders in complex operational environments. As a former journalist, human rights activist, organisational development professional and union organiser, he brings to UTS extensive experience in high-profile public engagement for rights-based advocacy.

Dr Thomas has played a leading role in a number of major policy reviews commissioned by the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care, including the Australian Health Technology Assessment Review (2023), the Efficient Funding of Chemotherapy Review (2023), the Review of the Discount Rate in the PBAC Guidelines (2022) and the Evaluation of the Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training Program (2020).

In addition to a substantial body of public policy evaluation, Dr Thomas is an emerging leader in the economics of digital health. As Project Lead for the Digital Health CRC project, Valuing digital health maturity," he is leading a multi-year collaboration between industry partners NSW Health and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society to demonstrate the empirical impact and health economic value of investments in digital health infrastructure.

Dr Thomas has also contributed to health economic evaluations of a number of clinical interventions to improve the wellbeing and quality of life of cancer patients and their carers.

Dr Thomas' research utilises a mix of critical qualitative and applied quantitative methods. He has expertise in the use of propensity score matching for the estimation of treatment effects (and relevant post-estimation diagnostic procedures), generalised linear models, principal component and factor analysis, and a range of other non-parametric techniques. He also brings more than 10 years' experience in ethnographic methods, survey design and data analytics.

Before joining CHERE, he was engaged as a post-doctoral fellow in the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine at James Cook University, where he investigated access to services and health outcomes among Indigenous Australian women; as an economist with the private health consultancy KBC Australia, where he led economic evaluations of several state and federal health initiatives; and as a researcher with the United Workers Union, where he empowered member organising efforts.

Dr Thomas has a long history of activism, specialising in women’s rights and empowerment, disability rights and grassroots community organising in Palestine.

"Economics is a social science. As a critical economist, I look at the way people’s choices are limited by dynamics of power and other systemic issues... My driving interest is not simply the financial outcomes for the system. I want to understand how the system is built, and how these structures impact the ability of everyday people to actualise their rights."