The SPHeRE Network 12th Annual Conference will be held on Thursday 19th February 2026 in RCSI.
The 2026 Conference theme is ‘Bridging the Gap: Advancing Population Health Equity in Ireland’
Access to high-quality healthcare is a fundamental determinant of population health. When such access is unevenly distributed, it becomes an unintended yet significant driver of health inequities.
At present, health resources in Ireland are largely allocated on a uniform basis. The conference will explore key aspects of moving towards a more equitable approach which aligns the distribution of resources with the specific health needs and circumstances of the populations being served.
Keynote Speakers and Workshop Facilitators
Professor Marie Johnston
Registered Health and Clinical Psychologist
Professor Emeritus of Health Psychology at the University of Aberdeen
Keynote Speaker
Marie Johnston is a Registered Health and Clinical Psychologist, and Professor Emeritus of Health Psychology at the University of Aberdeen.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and Honorary Fellow of the British Psychological Society, European Health Psychology Society and the Health Psychology and Public Health Network.
She conducts research on behaviour change in health and healthcare contexts and on disability (theory, measurement and intervention).
In 1986, she became the first chair of the Health Psychology section of the BPS and in 1992, the second president of the European Health Psychology Society. She has served on numerous BPS committees and in 1994 gained the BPS President’s Award.
Her previous posts were at the University of St Andrews, London University (Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine) and Oxford University, having completed her BSc at the University of Aberdeen and PhD at the University of Hull.
Professor Susan Smith
Professor of General Practice at Trinity College Dublin
Keynote Speaker
Susan Smith is Professor of General Practice at Trinity College Dublin and works as a General Practitioner at Inchicore Family Doctors in Dublin 8, Ireland. Her research interests include improving outcomes for patients living with multiple long term conditions (multimorbidity) and related clinical issues such as health equity and medicines management. She is the Associate Director of the HRB Primary Care Clinical Trials Network Ireland and has been the PI or Co-PI on eight RCTs of interventions for chronic disease management in Irish primary care settings and is currently PI for a national three arm cluster RCT (MIDAS) evaluating two interventions, GP based pharmacists and link workers providing social prescribing, for people with multimorbidity taking ten or more medicines. She is Clinical Lead for the HRB Evidence Synthesis for Clinical Guidelines programme, which supports production of Ireland’s Clinical Guidelines. She is Head of Discipline for Public Health and Primary Care in the School of Medicine in Trinity College Dublin. She also supports the coordination of the Deep End Ireland Group, which has received funding from the Department of Health and advocates for needs-based resource allocation for primary care services for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.
Bernard Gloster
Chief Executive Officer, HSE
Keynote Speaker
Bernard Gloster has been Chief Executive Officer of the HSE since March 2023. He has worked in health and social services for over 35 years. He rejoined the HSE from the state Child and Family Agency Tusla where he served as Chief Executive Officer from September 2019. Prior to that he held several senior management positions within the HSE including Chief Officer of HSE Mid-West Community Healthcare, and he worked in and managed in both community and acute hospital operations. He is a social care worker by profession, holds an MBA from Oxford Brookes University and an MSc in Management Practice from UCC. In 2024 he was awarded the inaugural Alumni Award of the Munster Technological University. In 2025 he was awarded the Advanced Diploma in Applied Employment Law from the Honourable Society of King’s Inns.
Professor Sinéad McGilloway
Founder Director of the Centre for Mental Health and Community Research at Maynooth University
Workshop Facilitator
Professor Sinéad McGilloway is Founder Director of the Centre for Mental Health and Community Research (formerly the Mental Health and Social Research Unit), which is located in Maynooth University Department of Psychology and the MU Social Sciences Institute (MUSSI). The centre currently has 25 full and affiliate members from within and beyond the Department of Psychology and Prof McGilloway leads a large team of postgraduate students (mainly PhD students) and research staff. She is a member of the MUSSI PI Forum and recently, she co-founded and co-leads the MU Interdisciplinary Childhood Outcome Network (ICON) which tendered successfully to be included in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability and Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) database of RPOs who will be invited to carry out research over the next five years.
Professor McGilloway is a research innovator/leader, educationalist, public health/community psychologist and mental health services researcher, with many years’ experience in undertaking applied health and social care research in the community, with a particular focus on mental health and well-being from the early years and beyond. She is a member of many national and international learned societies and organisations and she has led/is leading a number of large-scale cross-institutional and interdisciplinary engaged research programmes.
She has won significant research funding from a wide range of prestigious sources, including the Health Research Board, the Irish Research Council, the Health Service Executive and the National Institute of Health Research (UK). She has authored (and co-authored) almost 350 publications to date including: peer-reviewed papers; systematic reviews; books and volumes; book chapters; research, technical and policy reports/briefings; conference proceedings papers/publications; and a wide range of other scholarly publications aimed at diverse audiences.
Dr Olga Cleary
Cameron Lecturer in the School of Population Health at RCSI
Workshop Facilitator
Dr Olga Cleary is a Cameron Lecturer in the School of Population Health at RCSI, where she plays a leading role in the MSc in Population Health Leadership. She contributes to curriculum design and teaching across key modules, including those focused on systems thinking, ethics, and implementation science. She also holds an adjunct role as Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin, where she leads the Population Health Management module on the MSc in Health Policy and Management. Her teaching across both institutions reflects a commitment to equipping future health leaders with the tools to navigate complex systems and drive evidence-informed, equity-focused change for population health.
With over two decades of experience spanning health research, policy, and service planning, Olga has held roles in the Institute of Public Health and the Health Service Executive (HSE). Between 2022 and 2024, she served as Senior Research Manager in the HSE’s National Research and Development function. In this role, she led the ethics workstream of the National Electronic Research Management System (NERMS) and supported the operationalisation of the HSE Reference Research Ethics Committees (RECs), contributing to national research governance infrastructure. She also co-developed a training module on ethics in population health research, for PPI contributors to RECs, in collaboration with IPPOSI and the National Research Ethics Committee.
Olga’s research focuses on population health management, health systems performance, implementation science, and health policy evaluation, with a sustained emphasis on health equity and applied impact. She has contributed to several national and European policy initiatives in areas including multimorbidity, chronic disease, dementia prevention, and gender equity in health. Through her academic and policy-facing work, Olga aims to support more responsive, evidence-based, and equitable health systems.
