Professor
College of Medicine and Public Health
I am an injury epidemiologist and public health physician. I was appointed as founding Director of Research Centre for Injury Studies at Flinders University in 1997 and have been the Director of the National Injury Surveillance Unit (NISU) since 1990. I am active nationally and internationally in the areas of measurement and classification of injury, injury burden and determinants of injury in populations, and the descriptive epidemiology of injury for public health purposes.
Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, University of Melbourne, 1980.
Master of Public Health, University of Sydney, 1990
Treatise: Studying Work-Related Fatalities in Australia
Fellow, Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine, RACP, 1990.
Distinguished Career Award of the American Public Health Association Injury Prevention Section (2013)
Australian Injury Prevention Network 2015 Award for Contribution to Research in Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion
I supervise and mentor research students and teach introductory epidemiology to students in the first year of the Doctor of Medicine program.
I contributed to each of several phases of national public policy review and development concerning injury prevention since 1990. In each I was a member of a relevant committee. Recently, my work has contributed to policy and practice concerning Indigenous road safety, patient safety and suicide prevention. I was elected Chairperson of the Australasian Mortality Data Interest Group (AMDIG), the organisation concerned with mortality statistics in Australia and New Zealand, from 2009 to 2012. Since 2009 I have investigated problems with national cause of death statistics, which had potential to mislead users on matters such as trends in suicide.
I have long involvement with the National Coronial Information System, as a proponent for its development, a member of its governance bodies and a user of its data. I am currently a member of its Board.
I represent Flinders University in the SA and NT DataLink Consortium, which has developed a capability for non-identifying, whole-population research in two Australian jurisdictions, based on record linkage. I also represent Flinders on the advisory board of the Centre for Automotive Safety Research at the University of Adelaide.
From 2015 to 2018 I co-chaired a taskforce that was established by the WHO to assist it to finalise the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). I was appointed by the WHO in 2007 to be a member of the Revision Steering Group for the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), with responsibility for the injury and external causes chapters. I am also actively involved with the Topic Advisory Group on Quality and Safety. With others, I developed the International Classification of External Causes of Injuries, a related member of the WHO Family of International Classifications since 2003.