Editorial Structure

The Editor-in-Chief has overall responsibility for the journal. All submissions to Public Health Research and Practice are assessed initially by the Managing Editor and, if considered to lie within the journal's scope and to be of sufficient quality, are assigned to an Associate Editor who oversees the external peer review process. The Associate Editors are renowned researchers whose expertise spans topics relevant to the journal's scope. The journal also has an Editorial International Panel with backgrounds intersecting global, public health, health services planning, and policy making. 

Our journal editors are expected to work within the framework of the Core Practices, and according to the CSIRO Publishing Editorial Board Conduct Policy. 

Professor Don Nutbeam AO

Professor Nutbeam is currently a Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney and Executive Director of Sydney Health Partners, an organisation which works to translate research into evidence-based healthcare. Formerly a Senior Advisor at the Sax Institute, Professor Nutbeam is a public health scientist with research interests in the social and behavioural determinants of health, and in the development and evaluation of public health interventions. His career has spanned positions in universities, government, health services and an independent health research institute. This includes university leadership roles in Australia and the UK, and a period as Head of Public Health in the UK Department of Health during the Blair Government (2000–2003).

Associate Professor Jonathan Abrahams

Associate Professor Abrahams is Director of the Monash University Disaster Resilience Initiative in the Monash University Accident Research Centre. He collaborates with local, national and international partners on transdisciplinary research, education and projects that promote inclusion and integration of community resilience, health emergency and disaster risk management, and climate change adaptation. In the WHO Health Emergencies Program, he played leading roles in advancing risk-based and inclusive approaches to global policy, guidance and capacity development with health systems and the whole-of-society partners, as well as advising the negotiations of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. He is co-chair of the WHO Health EDRM Research Network and serves on the World Meteorological Organization Study Group on Integrated Health Services. His previous experience includes the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (Bangkok, Thailand), AusAID and Emergency Management Australia.

Professor Catherine Bennett
Associate Editor, Epidemiology

Professor Bennett has a distinguished career in public health practice, research, academic governance and teaching. She joined Deakin University, Melbourne, in 2009 as the inaugural chair of Epidemiology and is currently Head of Deakin Epidemiology, a research unit within the Institute of Health Transformation. Professor Bennett specialises in infectious disease epidemiology and community transmission, and has been one of Australia’s key public health communicators during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also leads an NHMRC-funded national research collaboration focused on the epidemiology of Staphylococcus aureus in the community. She previously spent more than eight years with the University of Melbourne and prior to that, worked with NSW Health, and held senior scientist positions in South Australian and Victorian State Governments.

Associate Professor Angie Bone
Associate Editor, Planetary Health

Associate Professor Bone (Planetary Health) is a public health physician at the Monash Sustainable Development Institute at Monash University. She has more than 15 years of policy, practice and research experience focusing on environmental factors that influence human health and health equity, following several years working in global health. Associate Professor Bone is a former Victorian Deputy Chief Health Officer (environment), Head of Extreme Events and Health Protection at Public Health England, and European Programme for Interventional Epidemiology Training (EPIET) fellow. She has a particular interest in sustainability, climate resilience and health, bridging the research-policy-practice gap, systems thinking, and integrating knowledge across diverse disciplines and perspectives. She is a board member of Doctors for the Environment, Australia, serves on CSIRO's Health and Biosecurity Advisory Group, and is a member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians' climate and health working group.

Professor Tony Capon

Professor Capon directs the Monash Sustainable Development Institute and holds a chair in planetary health in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. A public health physician and authority in environmental health and health promotion, his research focuses on urbanisation, sustainable development and human health. Dr Capon is a former director of the International Institute for Global Health at United Nations University (UNU-IIGH), and has previously held professorial appointments at the University of Sydney and Australian National University. He is a member of the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health that published its report, Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch in 2015, and a member of the International Advisory Board for The Lancet Planetary Health.

Professor Anne Cust

Professor Cust is a cancer epidemiologist, and Deputy Director of the Daffodil Centre, a joint venture between Cancer Council NSW and the University of Sydney, in Sydney, Australia. She is also a Faculty member of the Melanoma Institute Australia. Her main research interests are in skin cancer aetiology, prevention and early detection, including risk-stratified approaches to care, and she receives funding through a NHMRC Investigator Grant. She leads several large research programs on topics such as melanoma screening and surveillance, genomics for cancer early detection, preventive behavioural interventions, and biomarkers for melanoma survival. In 2018, she received the NSW Premier’s Award for Outstanding Cancer Research Fellow. She is a Past-President of the Australasian Epidemiological Association.

Professor Patricia M Davidson
Associate Editor, Global Health

Professor Davidson joined the University of Wollongong as Vice-Chancellor in May 2021. Prior to this, she was
Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore, United States. In 2021 she received the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) Distinguished Leader Award. This honour celebrates her exceptional contributions to the advancement of global health worldwide. As a global leader in nursing, healthcare, and advocacy, Professor Davidson’s work focuses on person-centred care delivery and the improvement of cardiovascular health outcomes for women and vulnerable populations. She has extensively studied chronic conditions, transitional care, palliative care, and the translation of innovative, acceptable, and sustainable health initiatives across the world. Professor Davidson serves as counsel general of the International Council on Women’s Health Issues, and was a past board member of CUGH and secretary general of the Secretariat of the World Health Organizations Collaborating Centres for Nursing and Midwifery. She also serves on the Board of Health Care Services for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in the United States.

Professor Mark Ferson
Associate Editor, Health Protection

Professor Ferson is a public health physician and paediatrician with additional qualifications in epidemiology and art history. He was the first public health unit director (1990-2021) in NSW and is currently Senior Medical Adviser, Public Health Unit, South Eastern Sydney Local Health District. He holds appointments as Adjunct Professor at the School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney, and the School of Medicine Sydney of Notre Dame University. His research interests are in the epidemiology and control of infectious diseases, with a focus on childcare settings, childhood vaccination, gastroenteritis viruses and the exanthemata, and on public health law and history, in which fields he has published widely.

Dr Becky Freeman
Associate Editor, New Media

Dr Freeman is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. Her primary research interests include tobacco control and how online and social media influence public health. She is an established authority on the potential of the Internet to circumvent tobacco advertising bans and has pioneered research methods in tracking and analysing online social media content. She has prepared technical reports for the World Health Organisation outlining how to monitor and regulate tobacco industry advertising and interference in tobacco control policy. Dr Freeman has also served as an adviser to the WHO expert panel on tobacco industry interference in tobacco control. Prior to pursuing her research interests in Australia, Dr Freeman has worked for both government and not-for-profit organisations in Canada and New Zealand.

Professor Mark Harris AO
Associate Editor, Primary Care

Professor Harris AO is Executive Director of Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity at UNSW Sydney. His main research is on long-term illness prevention and management in primary health care and on health equity, including refugee and asylum seeker health and community health workers. He has more than 450 publications in peer-reviewed journals which have been cited more than 6000 times.

Professor Professor Andrew Hayen
Associate Editor, Statistics

Professor Hayen is Professor of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health at UTS. His research interests are in the development and application of statistical methods in population health and clinical research. Professor Hayen is the Deputy Head of School for Teaching and Learning, where he oversees teaching in public health and health services management.

Associate Professor Natasha Howard
Associate Editor, Implementation Science

Associate Professor Natasha Howard has a broad interest in novel methodological and applied public health equity research approaches that are relevant and appropriate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research. Taking a systems view, her research provides the foundations for implementation science approaches that support the co-creation, implementation and evaluation of intersectoral, multilevel responses to contextual factors that underpin holistic health and wellbeing outcomes. Associate Professor Howard is a non-Indigenous woman and current Program Lead: Implementation Science, Wardliparingg Aboriginal Health Equity theme, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). She is a Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) Fellow; an invited member of the Global Alliance for Chronic Disease Advisory Group, Implementation Science; and current Co-Chair of the South Australian Implementation Science Network, hosted by Health Translation SA.

Dr Michelle Kennedy
Associate Editor, Aboriginal Health

Dr Kennedy, a Wiradjuri woman, is the Assistant Dean Indigenous Strategy and Leadership for the College of Health Medicine and Wellbeing at the University of Newcastle in NSW. She is also Executive Manager of Research and Knowledge Translation at the Lowitja Institute and Vice-President (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) for the Public Health Association Australia. Dr Kennedy holds a PhD in Aboriginal health and conducts research in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. She is leading a national study, Murru Minya, (www.murruminya.com.au) exploring the conduct of health research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities.

Dr Ruth Lopert
Associate Editor, Public Health Policy

Dr Lopert is a public health physician and consultant in global health and pharmaceutical policy. She is also Chercheur Associé Principal at the University of Strasbourg and an adjunct professor in the Department of Health Policy & Management at George Washington University, where she was Visiting Professor in 2011–12 and a Harkness Fellow in Health Policy in 2006–07. From 2008–11 Dr Lopert was the Australian Government’s Therapeutic Goods Administration’s Principal Medical Adviser; prior to that her roles included directing the pharmaceutical policy unit in the Department of Health, and as medical adviser to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Branch and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee.

Dr Andrew Milat

Dr Milat is Director, Evidence and Evaluation at the NSW Ministry of Health and Adjunct Professor in the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. He oversees the Centre for Epidemiology and Evidence, Evidence and Evaluation Unit responsible for: research funding schemes and Sax Institute contract; NSW Population Health Research Strategy; a strategic research and evaluation service and; three of Australia’s longest running and largest population Health Training Programs. Dr Milat has a unique appreciation of the interface between research, policy and practice, garnered through experience in leadership roles in local health districts, state and federal governments, non-government organisations and academia. He has published more than 136 peer-reviewed papers and has developed influential implementation science and scale-up models that have been cited over 500 times and used widely in policy in Australia and internationally. Dr Milat is ranked in the top 0.1% of researchers globally in program evaluation.

Professor Sallie Pearson

Professor Pearson is a pharmacoepidemiologist and leading authority in the conduct of population-based research using routinely collected data. She has led national and international studies leveraging ‘big health data’ to generate real-world evidence on the use, benefits and safety of prescribed medicines. Professor Pearson is the Professor of Health Systems, School of Population Health and the Theme Principal for Health Systems Research, UNSW Faculty of Medicine and Health. She also directs the NHMRC Medicines Intelligence Centre of Research Excellence, a collaborative research program accelerating real-world evidence development for medicines policy decision makers. Professor Pearson is a long-standing advocate for the safe and productive use of data to benefit the Australian community, and has published widely on maximising the value of data for decision making in health.

Professor David Peiris
Associate Editor, Primary Care

Professor Peiris is Acting Chief Scientist and Director of the Global Primary Health Care Program (Better Care) at the George Institute for Global Health. The program's goal is to overcome the challenges of delivering affordable, high-quality health services and programs to communities across the globe. He is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney and works clinically as a GP in Sydney. Professor Peiris has published extensively in areas related to health systems research and leads several grants testing innovative strategies to improve access to high-quality primary health care with a particular focus on under-served populations. He was the 2015-2016 Australian Harkness Fellow in Healthcare policy, based at Harvard School of Public Health, has been a board member with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners National Faculty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and was co-chair of the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases committee for hypertension control (2012-2105).

Mr Colin Sindall

Mr Sindall was the inaugural Chief Preventive Health Officer for the Victorian Government, having previously served as Director of Population Health and Prevention Strategy in the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services. His work in Victoria followed more than a decade as senior adviser in population health policy and strategy for the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing. He has been a consultant and temporary adviser for the World Health Organisation in chronic disease prevention and control, and served as a member of the OECD Expert Working Group on the Economics of Prevention. Mr Sindall currently works as a consultant.

Professor Ben Smith
Associate Editor, Health Promotion and Prevention

Professor Smith is Professor of Public Health (Prevention and Health Promotion) in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney. He is based in the Western Sydney Local Health District, where he supports research and translation projects that address prevention priorities in this large, socially diverse region. Professor Smith has extensive experience in research-practice partnerships, and has worked with state and national agencies on chronic disease prevention, social marketing, and health equity strategies. He is a member of the Prevention Research Collaboration at the University of Sydney, the Board of Healthy Male, and the Australian Coalition to End Loneliness.

Dr Duong (Danielle) Tran
Associate Editor, Big Data

Dr Duong Tran (known as Danielle Tran) is a medically trained epidemiologist with interests in perinatal pharmacoepidemiology and health services evaluation, leveraging big data in real-world settings. She is a Research Fellow at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW. With expertise in using population-based routine data collections and data linkage, Dr Tran leads multi-national studies investigating the use and safety of prescription medicines for smoking cessation, mental health, and substance use dependence in pregnant populations. She’s also led studies evaluating the quality of care and health outcomes in people with chronic health conditions.

Dr Natasha Weaver
Associate Editor, Statistics

Dr Weaver is a Lecturer in Biostatistics in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle, NSW, and works as a statistician for the COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium at the University of Queensland. She is an award-winning educator and received the Early Career Award for Innovation and Excellence in Public Health Teaching from the Council of Academic Public Health Institutions Australasia (CAPHIA) in 2019. Dr Weaver consults on statistical methodology, design, and data analysis to researchers and clinicians in critical care, traumatology, smoking cessation, asthma, and other areas.

Professor John Beard

Professor Beard leads the International Longevity Center – USA at Columbia University in New York. He was previously the Director of Ageing and Life Course at the World Health Organization in Geneva and continues to collaborate closely with academic partners and key decision makers in many parts of the world. He has a particular interest in framing health from the perspective of functioning rather than disease, and in understanding how physical and social environments impact trajectories of health across the life course.

Professor Vivian Lin

Professor Lin is the Executive Associate Dean, LKS Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, following more than 30 years' experience in public health, with a variety of roles in policy and program development, health services planning, research and teaching. She was Director of Health Systems for the World Health Organization in the Western Pacific Regional Office from 2013–2018 and prior to that, the Chair of Public Health at La Trobe University from 2000, having earlier worked in senior roles in a number of Australian jurisdictions. She is the author of several leading public health textbooks in Australia.