Fran Baum

Director, Southgate Institute & WHO Collaborating Centre on the Social Political and Commercial Determinants of Health Equity
Flinders University

Australia

Fran Baum is Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Public Health, Foundation Director of the Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on the Social, Political and Commercial Determinants of Health at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. She has been appointed to the Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health (2020-22). She was named in the Queen’s Birthday 2016 Honours List as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to higher education as an academic and public health researcher, as an advocate for improved access to community health care, and to professional organisations”. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and of the Australian Health Promotion Association. She is a past National President and Life Member of the Public Health Association of Australia. She co-Chair of the Global Steering Council of the People’s Health Movement – a global network of health activist (www. phmovement.org). She also served as a Commissioner on the World Health Organisation’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health from 2005-08. She is a passionate advocate for health equity and social justice and uses her research program on the social and economic determinants of health as a basis for this advocacy. She holds grants from the National Health & Medical Research Council and the Australia Research Council which are considering health inequities and public policy, social determinants of health and Health in All Policies. Her grants include an NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence on Policies for Health Equity of which she is one of the two co-Directors. Her book, The New Public Health (4th ed. published January 2016 Oxford University Press), is widely cited and used in many public health courses. Her latest book Governing for Health (Oxford University Press, New York, January, 2019) examines how a society can be best organised to promote health and equity.