Rate My Professor Rachael Lawrence Lodge

Dr Rachael Lawrence Lodge is a Research Fellow and Operations Director of the New Zealand Mortality Review Data Group (NZMRDG) within the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Otago's Dunedin School of Medicine. She holds a BSc(Hons) from 1998 and a PhD from 2016, both from the University of Otago. Her doctoral thesis examined alpha-niche differentiation in an herbaceous community, while her honours research tested the C-S-R theory in plant habitats. Raised in rural Southland and South Canterbury, Dr Lawrence Lodge began her career as a plant community ecologist before transitioning her expertise in system function, mechanisms, and resource use to health services research. She brings extensive corporate experience from roles in insurance and tax in New Zealand and Australia. Previously, she served as an Assistant Research Fellow in the Department of General Practice and Rural Health, contributing to Health Research Council-funded projects on regional District Health Board groupings for service integration and health outcomes, as well as research on the Rural Hospital Medicine Training Programme. She also acted as Performance Based Research Funding Officer for the Dunedin School of Medicine.

Dr Lawrence Lodge's research focuses on mortality collection systems, reporting, and analysis in support of the National Mortality Review Committee, including child and youth mortality, perinatal and maternal mortality in Aotearoa New Zealand. She leads operations for the NZMRDG at the University of Otago Dunedin Campus and participates in the Quantitative Social Science Research Group as Principal Investigator for studies on mortality risks among youth with neurodevelopmental conditions. Her contributions extend to the global HerbDivNet network studying herbaceous plant diversity. Key publications include co-authorship of 'Mortality risk of youth with neurodevelopmental conditions: An Aotearoa New Zealand nationwide birth cohort study' in JAMA Pediatrics (2025), annual Perinatal and Maternal Mortality Review Committee reports (2024 and 2022), and 'Consistent predictors of microbial community composition across spatial scales in grasslands' in Molecular Ecology (2023).