Dr Olivia Fisher
About
Olivia is an implementation scientist and mental illness prevention researcher with a health sector career spanning 25 years. Olivia has extensive experience supporting organisations to design, implement and evaluate health initiatives in health services, aged care, workplace, and education settings.
Olivia is strongly committed to improving outcomes for patients, staff, and healthcare organisations by better understanding and promoting good health and preventing illness; improving healthcare equity; and co-designing services with the people who deliver and use those services.
Olivia’s mental health research investigates how the factors that predict depression and anxiety symptoms and mental wellbeing differ between age groups and generations, and what this means for better prevention and management of mental illness.
Career highlights include:
- Leading Wesley Research Institute’s multidisciplinary Virtual Hospital and Healthcare Research Program
- Establishment of Wesley Research Institute’s Health Services Research Program
- Leading the statewide evaluation of police and ambulance mental health co-responder programs
- Academic Coordinator of the Graduate Certificate in Health Science (Health Services Innovation), Queensland University of Technology
- Queensland Coordinator of the world leading MindMatters Initiative for mental health promotion, prevention, and early intervention in secondary school
- Clinical occupational therapy roles in public and private hospitals and community organisations
Research Impact
Olivia’s applied implementation science research has had direct impact on clinical practice, health service design, and healthcare access, such as:
- Olivia’s Virtual Hospital research informed UnitingCare Queensland on considerations, barriers and enablers to establishment of a private virtual hospital. A close collaborative working relationship was formed between the research team and UnitingCare Queensland’s project team, where emerging research results were shared and informed decision making in real time.
- Olivia led Wesley Research Institute’s groundbreaking study that identified healthcare leaders and clinicians are willing to accept a lower standard of care in rural and remote areas because it’s ‘better than nothing.’ This work, published in March 2025, created an important public discussion about healthcare standards in rural and remote communities in the leadup to the 2025 election. It has been shared by 62 news outlets around Australia and internationally, and is now in the top 0.2% of all time for global research attention score (Altmetrics).
- The identification of implementation determinants of a successful police mental health co-responder model informed the roll-out of co-responder units in Queensland. This expansion of police and ambulance co-responder programs was a key recommendation of the Queensland Parliament Select Committee on Mental Health.
- Olivia was a research investigator on the team from Queensland University of Technology that developed the Isaac Navicare model which was implemented by Wesley Research Institute in 2021. The Isaac Navicare Pilot Evaluation, led by Olivia and Kelly McGrath, identified that within the first 12-months the service had made a substantial impact on the access to timely mental health supports for people living in the Isaac region.
Qualifications
Bachelor of Occupational Therapy, The University of Queensland
Graduate Certificate in Health Studies (Addiction Studies), The University of Queensland
PhD (Public Health), Queensland University of Technology
Featured Publications
McGrath, K., Grogan, C., Barron, A., Smith, I., Kanagarajah, S., Smith, S-E., & Fisher, O. J. (2025). Clinicians’ and healthcare leaders’ perspectives on suitability of virtual healthcare in metropolitan versus rural areas. Npj Health Systems, 2, Article Number 7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44401-024-00007-y
Fisher, O.J., Grogan, C., Barron, A., Kanagarajah, S., Smith, S-E., Smith, I. & McGrath, K. (2025) Considerations for establishment of a private virtual hospital identified using an implementation science approach. Scientific Reports 15, 3660. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-85965-5
Fisher, O. J., Moshi, B., McGrath, K., Barron, A., Kanagarajah, S., Smith, I., Smith, S-E., Martin, E., Cockshaw, W. & Grogan, C. (2024 Pre-print). Take the care to the patient: Co-designed principles for establishment of a virtual hospital, 18 July 2024, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4683810/v1
Fisher, O. J., Grogan, C., McGrath, K., Kanagarajah, S., Smith, S-E., Smith, I., Martin, E., Cockshaw, W., Moshi, B., & Barron, A. (2024). UnitingCare Queensland Virtual Hospital Context Assessment and Co-Design: Internal Report to the UnitingCare Board and Virtual Hospital Steering Committee. Report: Wesley Research Institute, Brisbane, Australia.
Fisher, O. J.*, McGrath, K.*, Grogan, C., Cockshaw, W., & Leggatt-Cook, C. (2024). Care navigation addresses issues of tele-mental health acceptability and uptake in rural and remote communities. PLoS ONE 19(4): e0298655. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298655
Grogan, C., Harriman, S., Martin, E., Waite, R., Hawthorne, L., & Fisher, O. J. (2024). Dementia In-Home Respite: Understanding the perspectives and wishes of family carers and people living with dementia to inform the dementia in-home respite program: Confidential Internal Report. Wesley Research Institute, Brisbane, Queensland
Fisher, O. J., Donahoo, C., Bosley, E., du Cloux, R., Garner, S., Powell, S., Pickard, J., Grevis-James, N., & Wyder, M. (2024) Barriers and enablers to implementing police mental health co-responder programs: A qualitative study using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research. Implementation Research and Practice, 5. https://doi.org/10.1177/26334895231220259
Fisher, O. J., Carroll, J-A., Shochet, I. M., Cockshaw, W., & Hou, X-Y. (2023). Using a Trans-Theoretical Approach to Identify Differences in Determinants of Anxiety and Depression Symptoms and Mental Wellbeing between Two Age Groups. Journal of Adult Development. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-023-09465-4
Martin, E., Fisher, O., Merlo, G., Zardo, P., Barrimore, S., Rowland, J. & Davies, J. (2022). Impact of a health services innovation university program in a major public hospital and health service. Implementation Science Communications, 3, Article number 46. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43058-022-00293-3
Professional memberships
2023 – Ongoing – Member of the Health Services Research Association of Australia and New Zealand
2024 – Ongoing – Society for Implementation Research Collaboration
2024 – Ongoing – Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association
Affiliations
2023 – Ongoing – Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Charles Darwin University
In the media
2025 – The Conversation – https://theconversation.com/better-than-nothing-clinicians-and-hospital-heads-accept-lower-standards-of-care-outside-metro-hospitals-251063
2025 – ABC Radio Kimberley Pilbara Mornings – https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/kimberley-mornings/mornings/105084192
Links
