Sharon Kosmina

Sharon has dedicated her career to innovation and collaboration for positive change in health and community services.

She has a passion for public health, and expertise in primary health, rural health, health workforce, Indigenous health and community services.

Sharon is particularly skilled at getting across complex topic areas quickly, allowing her to appropriately consult, synthesise feedback and develop common themes and findings. This makes her an outstanding project lead, and a valuable contributor to the whole team.

Her recent work includes:

• Managing a national review of the supply and use of pharmaceuticals under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) in Hospitals
• Designing methodologies for a review of national review of diversity strategies in Aged Care
• Managing a project to examine how quality indicators of maternity risk are managed in hospitals
• Examining the efficacy of patient chronic disease and patient activation assessment tools, as part of the Medibank CareFirst program evaluation.

Prior to joining AHA, Sharon worked as a senior executive in the not-for-profit and government sectors and held national advisory roles in health workforce and rural health planning, policy and program development. Key highlights include:

• As the founding project director at Rural Workforce Agency Victoria, she worked with the CEO to build the agency from scratch to become a multi-program state-wide organisation with a budget of more than $30 million.

In her early career, Sharon co-founded a social enterprise, Breaking the Cycle, that worked with more than 1,200 long-term unemployed, homeless and at-risk young people to create employment and training opportunities. She has retained an interest in social enterprise and social impact measurement.