Rob Donovan

Rob Donovan is Adjunct Professor in the School of Human Sciences at the University of WA. He is the Founder and Principal of Mentally Healthy WA’s Act-Belong-Commit campaign.

A registered psychologist, he has held academic positions in marketing in several US universities and been a Visiting Scientist at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

He has had extensive commercial marketing and advertising research experience for a variety of state and national clients, and began his marketing career in the marketing department of a major brewery. In 1974 he founded Donovan Research, which was absorbed first by NFO WorldWide and is now part of TNS Research.

He has an international reputation in social marketing and health promotion with around 250 (co-authored) books, book chapters and refereed journal articles, and a similar number of technical reports. He has a broad range of research and program experience in the health and social policy areas, including alcohol, tobacco and drugs, road safety, sun protection, the built environment and physical activity, child abuse, domestic violence, racism, doping in sport, suicide prevention and mental health.He has provided expert witness testimony on the marketing practices of the tobacco, asbestos and pharmaceutical industries, and has served on many state and national committees on a variety of topics.

He has been Deputy Chair of the WA Ministerial Council on Suicide Prevention, Vice-president of the Board of Relationships Australia WA, and a member of the Mates in Construction WA Board. He was a Foundation member representing the Australian Government on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Education Committee (2000-2012), chaired the Agency’s Social Science Research Sub-Committee, and is now Chair of the Social Sciences Expert Advisory Group. Google Scholar h-Index 58, i10 175.