NHMRC Fellowship for population health expert
One of the University of South Australia's newest professorial
appointments, John Lynch, has just been awarded a National Health and
Medical Research Council Senior Principal Research Fellowship.The Fellowship will provide almost $770,000 in funding over the next five years for the development of an advanced research hub in population health.
An internationally recognised scholar, Professor Lynch says he was drawn to return to South Australia after a 20-year research career overseas because of a powerful alignment of factors set to build the state's profile as a unique location for population health research. He joined the Population Health Cluster in UniSA's Division of Health in May this year.
Prof Lynch received his PhD in epidemiology from the University California at Berkeley and has spent 20 years working and researching in North America. Before joining UniSA he was at University of Michigan's Department of Epidemiology and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Epidemiology at McGill University.
An internationally recognised scholar in epidemiology and population health, he has wide-ranging research collaborations in Brazil, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Korea, Sweden and the US.
He has received research funding from the US National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. He has served on international and national advisory and review boards including the WHO, European Science Foundation among many others. His research interests include early life determinants of health, lifecourse processes regulating health behaviours, population health monitoring and improving the public health research-policy nexus. In 2007 he was was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Medical Science from the University of Copenhagen.
One of his particular interests is in the importance of early life interventions for improved population health.
He believes South Australia will evolve as one of a handful of places in the world where health researchers can develop scientifically innovative population health research platforms.
"This State has the right factors in place to create an incredibly valuable environment for population health research as it moves beyond being the science of observation to becoming intervention-focused and more powerful in solving health problems across lifetimes," Prof Lynch said.
"One of the key research questions we must ask is how a good start in life helps to ensure better social, emotional, educational, workforce and health outcomes in later life?" he said.
"As research in this field changes, the opportunity to work in an environment with strong government support and excellent levels of collaboration across the health sector and research community is increasingly rare.
"We will be focussed on the development and evaluation of effective interventions, and integrating that research evidence into the way health services are informed and delivered. The ultimate goal will be to make a direct link between population health research and real improvement in the health of South Australians and other populations around the world," Prof Lynch said.