Dr Ashfaq Chauhan is a postdoctoral research fellow and coordinator of the Healthcare Engagement and Equity Research stream within the Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University. With less than two years post PhD, Dr Chauhan has produced 31 peer-reviewed publications, been cited over 1300 times, delivered 47 presentations and have authored seven government reports. He has acquired over $1.4 million in funding as a chief investigator and developed an exceptional program of work with Field Weighted Citation Index of 2.51. He has received five awards including the Outstanding Early Career Researcher Award at the 2024 NSW Premier’s Awards for Outstanding Cancer Research.

As a refugee and migrant, Dr Chauhan’s is developing a research program that is focused on improving patient safety and quality related health outcomes for people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds accessing cancer care. He uses multi-method approaches including novel co-design that is targeted for CALD communities to develop interventions with these communities to improve outcomes. His research is the first to establish that one in three patients from CALD backgrounds accessing cancer care in Australia are exposed to patient harm. This demonstrated significant inequity in patient safety outcomes for people from CALD backgrounds with cancer when compared to general population in whom the rate of patient harm has been consistently reported to be 1 in 10.

Dr Chauhan has developed and delivered innovative tools and resources that have received recognition nationally and internationally. He developed a medication management tool called the “Making-it-Meaningful’ (MiM) in collaboration of two Mandarin speaking and three cancer clinicians to improve medication safety in outpatient cancer care for people from CALD backgrounds. This tool is currently being evaluated at two cancer services in NSW with Mandari- and English-speaking people with cancer. Based on his expertise in developing tools, Dr Chauhan was invited by an industry partner to develop adherence assessment tools for optimal care pathways (OCPs) for three blood cancer types. He acquired and led the $46,500AUD funded project and produced three OCP adherence assessment tools with a corresponding user guide. These tools and user guide have been downloaded over 200 times, were vital in acquiring $30,000AUD NSW Remote Cancer Research Network Research Starter Grant, and are being applied at Calvary Mater and Port Macquarie Base Hospital in NSW.

Dr Chauhan is currently co-leading and managing a three-year $598,000AUD research project funded by Cancer Institute NSW to improve uptake of advance care planning (ACP) among people from CALD backgrounds with cancer. His research conducted as part of this project has demonstrated implementation gap for ACP among people from CALD backgrounds with cancer, especially when language support is needed. He led the development of a co-design program of work, called iCanPlan, to improve ways in which clinicians and interpreters work together to improve uptake of ACP among people from CALD backgrounds with cancer. iCanPlan will be evaluated at three cancer services next year.