Dr William McCann

Dr William McCann is Manager of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Better Health Outcomes for Compensable Injury and Senior Research Project Officer at RECOVER Injury Research Centre (The University of Queensland).

Since joining the team in March 2025, he leads operations and knowledge translation for the CRE, coordinates the MRFF-funded PICOT trial evaluating scalable online training for physiotherapists delivering StressModex (an integrated psychological and physical intervention for musculoskeletal road traffic injuries) across 45 clinics nationwide, leads a Discrete Choice Experiment quantifying physiotherapists’ preferences and willingness-to-pay for clinical supervision models to support psychologically informed practice, and develops AI-assisted methods to evaluate therapist quality and fidelity in Stress Inoculation Training sessions. He also directs digital communications and contributes to national consumer-involvement networks for road-traffic injury recovery.

William’s expertise in healthcare psychology and psychological distress pathways, developed through his PhD research on psychological recovery of cardiac surgery patients (particularly rural and remote populations), underpins his work advancing biopsychosocial recovery after compensable musculoskeletal injury. He holds a Bachelor of Psychological Science (Honours) from UQ (2020) and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Southern Queensland (2025).