DrOlga Cleary

Olga 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.