Professor Kim Usher AM is a distinguished nurse scientist and scholar with a strong commitment to improving the mental health of vulnerable groups, including women, people with a mental illness, and Indigenous people of Australia, as well as identifying inequity in health care. 

She has a current h-index of 44, has over 300 peer-reviewed publications in high quality journals, and has attracted over $10 million in research and consultancy funding during her career. Kim has been recognised as a leading mental health nurse researcher in Australia and internationally. For example, Kim has worked for organisations including the Australian Government (AusAID), the World Health Organization and the International Council of Nurses. In addition, Kim was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of sustained contribution to nursing and midwifery education and research. 

After a prolonged period of service in tertiary education, Kim has been able to commit more heavily to research in the last six years. Her research in the past six years has focused on the mental health of vulnerable groups who have been traumatised in disaster situations such as bushfires, the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and severe weather events. 

In the last few years Kim has attracted a significant amount of level one competitive funding ($1,900,000), two grants as CIA, (one as CIB and one as AI for an ECR application). 

Kim has supervised more than 50 PhD students during her career, many of whom have focused on issues of relevance to mental health nursing. Many of those students have gone on to take leading roles in mental health nursing in Australia and abroad. 

Kim's research outputs have been highly impactful and used in numerous research and policy documents to highlight the need for change. For example, a recent editorial she led about domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn significant attention to the impact of disasters on women and their mental health; it continues to be the most highly cited paper in the International Journal of Mental health Nursing. 

Kim has been a longstanding member of the ACMHN and has taken on a variety of roles in her 30 plus years of membership. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing; a position she has held for 7 years. Kim is now the Associate Dean for Research at the University of New England. In this role she will commit a significant amount of time to mentoring emerging mental health researchers.