Associate Professor Ian Anderson

Position

Director, VicHealth Koori Health Research and Community Development Unit, Centre for the Study of Health and Society, University of Melbourne

Address

207-211 Grattan Street
Parkville, Victoria, 3052

Telephone

Unavailable

Biographic details

Associate Professor Ian Anderson has worked in Aboriginal (Koori) Health for about 15 years. He has worked in a number of job contexts: as an Aboriginal health worker, health educator and general practitioner. More recently he was Chief Executive Officer of the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, then the Medical Adviser to the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health in the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care. Ian has had involvement in Aboriginal health policy development for a number of years. For example, he was chair of the National Indigenous Sexual Health Working Party that oversaw the development of the National Indigenous Sexual Health Strategy in 1997.

Ian is Koori and has a professional background in medicine and social sciences. He has written widely on issues related to Aboriginal health, identity and culture. He also has a broad interest in the sociology of health and illness, related policy analysis, and theory development in the social sciences.

As Director of the VicHealth Koori Health Research and Community Development Program, Ian is leading the development of an integrated health services research and community development program. The key focus of the program is to develop a focus in research action on gaps in knowledge critical to the improvement of health care delivery to Koori people. This requires the development of a multi-disciplinary strategy in research, drawing together: history, policy analysis, health economics and other social sciences disciplines with insights from biomedical disciplines. The development of partnerships with Victorian Koori communities is critical to the success of this program.