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Director, School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) and Professor of Health Equity, ANU, Australian National University

Sharon Friel is Professor of Health Equity and Director of the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University. She is also the Director of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy ANU. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia. Between 2005 and 2008 she was the Head of the Scientific Secretariat (University College London) of the World Health Organisation Commission on Social Determinants of Health. In 2010 she was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship to investigate the interface between health equity, social determinants and climate change, based at the ANU. Before moving to Australia, she worked for many years in the Department of Health Promotion, National University of Ireland, Galway.

Prof Friel's research is policy and governance focused and in areas of social determinants of health; global health; trade and investment, climate change; food systems; urbanisation and non-communicable disease prevention. She is chief investigator on several major research collaborations in the determinants of health inequities, and is co-director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on the Social Determinants of Health Inequities.

Experience

  • –present
    Professor of Health Equity, Australian National University

Education

  • 2002 
    National University of Ireland, Galway, PhD