Professor Fran Baum

"Creating healthy and fair communities: personalised medicine or collective publlic health?"

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Professor Baum is a Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Public Health and is one of Australia's leading researchers on the social and economic determinants of health. Professor Baum's numerous publications relate to the social determinants of health, including Aboriginal people's health, health inequities, primary health care, health promotion, healthy cities, and social capital. Her textbook ‘The New Public Health’ is widely used as a core public health text. Furthermore, her significant contributions to the field of Public Health led her to being appointed as a Commissioner on the World Health Organisation’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health from 2005-08. 

 

Professor Baum’s numerous academic and political appointments have not hindered her research interest and output, as she continues to publish on the most fundamental subjects that underlie our health system. Her responses to the 2014 federal budget were widely reported and her recent publications have argued for the need to provide comprehensive primary health care, as well as addressing the social determinants of health within an Australian context. Professor Baum’s speaking engagements have been numerous and  impressive - including at the 2008 Fullbright Symposium, the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, and the Global Forum on Urbanization and Health, and of course the 2015 Lambie-Dew Oration.