Billie Atanasova
BHSc (Hons) (La Trobe University), MPH (Melbourne University), AFCHSM, CHE
Billie Atanasova was appointed Director, International Funding and Research, GENI in June 2016. She is the Executive Director, Membership, Sponsorship and Marketing at Leading Age Service Australia (LASA), a role she has held since 2014. With over 22 years experience in the health sector, Billie is an experienced health executive, project manager, researcher, evaluator and mentor who has worked across various public, private and corporate settings.
Billie has held senior roles at the Australasian College of Health Service Management (ACHSM), including Executive Officer (Victoria) and Manager, Policy, Advocacy and Management Residency Program. During her tenure at the ACHSM Billie fostered productive collaboration with GENI through the ACHSM’s residency program and her effective stakeholder engagement via facilitating a televised policy debate on key 2014-15 Victorian Health Budget policy initiatives, involving the Victorian Government; CEO, GENI and several hospital CEOs.
Billie has contributed to large-scale public health projects aimed at investigating environmental, genetic and behavioural contributing factors of disease prevalence, and researching alternative treatments to various cancers. She has extensive prior experience in senior research, health evaluation and health economics roles in university research, hospital and GP settings. She has held roles such as Manager, Research and Evaluation at Drink Wise Australia; Senior Research Officer with the Centre for Molecular, Environmental, Genetic and Analytic Epidemiology at the University of Melbourne; Project Officer and Evaluator roles with the Department of Medicine and Ambulatory Care at The Angliss Hospital. She also worked at the Centre for Health Program Evaluation, in the Health Economics and Health Program Evaluation Units, and the Melbourne Division of General Practice. In 2008, Billie was the project lead of the Intoxication Workshop, held in Paris with 15 international academics and industry experts representing Australia, USA, UK, Canada, Asia, and Russia.
She has extensive experience in identifying opportunities and preparing health services research grant funding applications. She increased the number of grant submissions by the ACHSM by 3 fold in a 12 month period and has spent much of her career preparing National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grants. Billie’s experience in evidence based research, evaluation and funding is a great value add to the work of GENI.
Contact: BillieA@lasavictoria.asn.au