Head of National Health Information Systems at the Health Research Board, Dr Sarah Craig represents the first student from University College Dublin (UCD) to graduate from the Doctorate in Governance (DGov) which is a professional doctoral programme now offered jointly by the IPA and UCD. A graduate of UCD with a social science degree and master’s in social policy, Dr Craig is pictured below with her UCD academic supervisor, Professor Naonori Kodate and Professor Michelle Norris, Head of the UCD School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice. Sarah has spent her professional career in different policy research environments, including the Combat Poverty Agency (CPA), the National Economic and Social Forum (NESF), the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) and more recently the Health Research Board (HRB). As part of the Doctoral Programme in Governance, Sarah wrote a dissertation entitled ’The state of health information in Ireland: a socio-technical analysis’ utilising five working health information systems that are housed within the HRB. The DGov programme which is aimed at public policy-makers and public sector managers like Sarah, is an analytically challenging and problem-oriented programme which provides advanced knowledge and high-level critical skills required by professionals in public sector environments. Dr Sarah Craig’s first and second supervisors were Dr Naonori Kodate, UCD and Dr Cedric Chau, IPA.
Dr Craig says about the DGov programme:
“The DGov was a perfect fit for me, because it encouraged the kind of interdisciplinary thinking that is essential to understand the many complexities within the public policy sector. In particular I valued having access to so many different experts and ideas from academics with different disciplinary backgrounds. I was keen to be able to focus my research on a topic aligned with the HRB’s strategic aims as well as having overall relevance for policy and practice across the range of health information systems in Ireland.”
