Susan M Sawyer

Professor Susan Sawyer AM MBBS MD FRACP FSAHM holds the inaugural Chair of Adolescent Health at The University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. A paediatrician by training, she is the Director of the Centre for Adolescent Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre and a research fellow at Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. A member of the WHO Technical Steering Committee on Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (chairman, 2012-2017), she has widely undertaken advisory and consultancy roles with the various UN agencies such as WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO and UNFPA. Most recently this has involved being the academic lead of the first global standards for Health-promoting Schools for WHO and UNESCO. Susan was president of the International Association for Adolescent Health from 2017-2021 (currently immediate past president, 2022-24). She is a past board member of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine in the United States and is also a past president of the International Chapter of the US Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. She co-chaired the 2016 Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Well-Being which followed earlier leadership for the Lancet’s 2007 and 2012 series on Adolescent Health. She has authored over 330 peer review publications and 50 book chapters, and has coedited an Australian textbook on Youth Health and Adolescent Medicine.