Robert Hall graduated in medicine from Sydney University in 1978. He has worked in public health for over 30 years, at local, State, national and international levels. In the early 1980s he worked for 4 years in the Northern Territory in Aboriginal health, including at the Urapuntja Health Service at Utopia Station. Since then, he has worked in communicable disease control at the Commonwealth Department of Health, where he edited Communicable Diseases Intelligence, and was Director of Communicable Disease Control in South Australia. He was Director of Public Health in Victoria. He joined the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine in 2007. Dr Hall has been a member of several National Health and Medical Research Council committees, including the Council. He is currently chair of the Technical Advisory Committee on Immunization and Vaccine Preventable Diseases for the Western Pacific Region of the WHO.