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Australian women in public health are doing work that sits largely outside the headlines but shapes how the country responds to disease, inequality, and system failure. They run national surveillance programs, direct government health agencies, lead the research bodies that inform policy, and take the roles that require both scientific credibility and political fluency. The list below covers practitioners across epidemiology, health policy, preventive medicine, and emergency health response.
Why public health representation matters
Public health leadership is different from clinical leadership. The decisions made at this level affect whole populations, not individual patients. Who leads these institutions shapes which communities get resources, how risk is communicated, and what trade-offs government is willing to make. Women have long been overrepresented in the public health workforce at junior levels and underrepresented at the top. That gap is narrowing, and the leaders below are part of why.
For context on how similar underrepresentation plays out across adjacent sectors, the patterns tracked in Australian women in mental health show a comparable story: strong professional pipelines feeding into leadership structures that have been slow to change.
The leaders shaping Australian public health
Professor Jodie McVernon
Professor Jodie McVernon directs the Epidemiology and Public Health Research program at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne. McVernon led epidemiological modelling that informed Australia's COVID-19 response strategy and continues to work on vaccine-preventable disease surveillance. Her work sits at the intersection of computational modelling and real-world policy advice. Few people in the country have done more to make epidemiological evidence legible to decision-makers under pressure.
Professor Catherine Bennett
Professor Catherine Bennett holds the Chair of Epidemiology at Deakin University and became one of the most publicly visible epidemiologists in Australia during the pandemic years. Bennett is known for communicating risk clearly without stripping out complexity. She contributes to both academic research and public commentary, giving her a reach that most researchers don't have.
Dr Lara Herrero
Dr Lara Herrero is a virologist and research leader at Griffith University whose work focuses on emerging infectious diseases, particularly mosquito-borne viruses including Ross River virus and dengue. Herrero has built a research program that links laboratory science directly to public health surveillance. Her work is especially relevant given climate-driven shifts in vector habitats across northern Australia.
Professor Lisa Maher
Professor Lisa Maher heads the Viral Hepatitis Epidemiology research group at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney. Her program tracks hepatitis C elimination progress in Australia and contributes to international elimination efforts. Maher's work is a clear example of public health research that drives changes in treatment access, not just in academic journals.
Professor Nancy Baxter
Professor Nancy Baxter holds the Chair of Cancer Epidemiology at the University of Melbourne and directs research into cancer screening program design. Her work examines which screening interventions reduce mortality and which ones add burden without benefit. Baxter brings a surgical background to epidemiology, which is uncommon, and she uses it to ask sharp questions about clinical evidence.
Dr Vanessa Johnston
Dr Vanessa Johnston is a public health physician and researcher working on infectious disease in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Johnston's work addresses the structural determinants that drive infectious disease burden in these populations, including housing, access to clean water, and proximity to diagnostic services. Her research connects clinical findings to policy levers.
Professor Megan Smith
Professor Megan Smith leads population health research at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), focusing on preventive health interventions at the community level. Smith works on behavioural determinants of chronic disease, with a particular focus on how digital tools can be used for population-level prevention programs. It's applied work with measurable outcomes.
Associate Professor Skye McGregor
Associate Professor Skye McGregor leads sexual health and blood-borne virus epidemiology at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney. McGregor's research tracks HIV incidence, gonorrhoea patterns, and access to testing and treatment across Australia. Her program produces the surveillance data that national health authorities use to set prevention priorities.
Professor Tarun Weeramanthri
Professor Tarun Weeramanthri is a public health physician and former Chief Health Officer of Western Australia who has held senior roles at the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). Her work spans health system stewardship, ethics in public health practice, and the governance of health technology. She brings a policy lens to questions that often stay siloed in clinical or academic settings.
Professor Julie Leask
Professor Julie Leask is a public health researcher at the University of Sydney whose work focuses on vaccine communication and vaccine hesitancy. Leask's research is practically oriented: she develops communication frameworks that health workers can actually use with hesitant patients. Her influence runs through public health training programs, government campaigns, and international immunisation bodies.
How this list was compiled
These names were selected based on current role seniority, research output, policy influence, or demonstrated public health impact. The list is not exhaustive. Australian public health is a wide field, and strong practitioners work at every level of government, in non-government organisations, in universities, and in international agencies. The common thread here is either sustained contribution to public health evidence or direct influence over the systems that protect population health.
Public health leadership connects to the broader question of who holds power in Australian institutions. The work tracked in Australian women in government covers the ministers and department secretaries who translate public health advice into funded programs, and the two lists are more connected than they might appear.
What to watch
Three areas are drawing the most attention in Australian public health right now. Climate-linked disease burden is rising, particularly vector-borne infections in northern states. Antimicrobial resistance is moving up the policy agenda after years as a technical concern. And the long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on health system capacity and workforce retention are still being counted. Each of these problems needs exactly the kind of leadership this list represents: people who can read complex evidence, communicate it honestly, and work within the political constraints that govern public health funding. The women above are doing that work.
Public health doesn't produce the same visible career markers as other sectors. There are no IPOs, no board seats disclosed to the ASX, and no earnings calls. What it produces is population outcomes, and those take years to measure. That lag makes it easy to undercount the influence of the people doing this work. These leaders are worth counting.