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Susan Sawyer

Research areas: Medicine · Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health · Adolescent and Pediatric Healthcare · Eating Disorders and Behaviors · Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior

ORCID iD 0000-0002-9095-358X
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About

Professor Susan Sawyer AM was appointed to the inaugural Chair of Adolescent Health at The University of Melbourne in 2005, the first chair of adolescent health in Australia, which became endowed in 2015 as the Geoff and Helen Handbury Chair of Adolescent Health. She is Director of the Centre for Adolescent Health, Royal Children’s Hospital (2005-), a World Health Organization collaborating centre in adolescent health (2015-). She was inducted into the Victorian Women’s Honour Roll in 2013 in recognition of her contribution to adolescent health and medicine and was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2020.

Professor Sawyer’s medical training was at The University of Melbourne (1980-85), followed by specialist training in Paediatrics at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) (1987-92). She obtained sub-specialist training in Respiratory Paediatrics at the RCH (1991-93), followed by post-doctoral training at the Harvard School of Public Health and Children’s Hospital Boston, USA (1993-95).

She is widely published, with over 400 peer review publications (H-index 97), 50 book chapters and a textbook on adolescent health, together with various consumer orientated publications. She co-led the first (2007) and second (2012) series on Adolescent Health for the Lancet, and was a lead Commissioner for the 2016 and 2025 Lancet Commissions on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing. She is a member of the editorial advisory boards of the Medical Journal of Australia, the Journal of Adolescent Health and The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.

Susan's major research interests focus on the epidemiology of common health conditions in adolescence and young adulthood. Her research has provided a foundation for understanding how universal health coverage can be achieved for adolescents, including aspects of access, quality and accountability. Her early research interests focused on young people with chronic illness; her doctoral studies explored how increasing survival in young people with cystic fibrosis alters the significance of health issues experienced in adolescent and young adult life. This influenced clinical program models for adolescents and young adults with various conditions including cancer, diabetes, congenital heart disease and spina bifida, as well as CF. She has a particular interest in clinical strategies that support adolescents' emerging capacity for self-management, that ensure appropriate health risk assessment, timely transition to adult health care, adherence to treatment guidelines and engagement with mental health and palliative care services. She is especially interested in how clinical services can become better oriented to young people’s health needs, and in the role of schools in both promoting health and wellbeing and delivering health services.

Susan is highly knowledgeable about the ethics of adolescent health research and has a keen interest in participatory research methods with young people.

Professor Sawyer has invested substantial energy building local, national and international capacity in adolescent health. A practicing adolescent physician, she has supervised large numbers of clinical trainees, multidisciplinary research trainees and doctoral students in adolescent health and medicine. She has been involved in various government, community and consumer committees to promote the health and wellbeing of adolescents including being the inaugural chairman of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians’ Adolescent Health Committee (2003-2008) which established the framework for the establishment of a specialist training path for adolescent and young adult medicine in Australia. She chairs the Victorian Statewide Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Committee (2009-) and is a past chair of Diabetes Australia’s Youth Transition Committee (2010-2018).

Susan is highly active in global adolescent health. She led the development of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Global Adolescent Health (Coursera/The University of Melbourne) in 2015. Professor Sawyer is director of a WHO collaborating centre for adolescent health and has held various advisory roles to WHO (eg Chairman, Technical Steering Committee on Maternal, Newborn, Child & Adolescent Health [2011-2017]), as well as with UNICEF, UNESCO, UNFPA and the World Bank. She has advised the Singaporean and Malaysian governments on adolescent medicine which resulted in policy commitments and service developments in the region.

Internationally, she is the immediate past-president of the International Association for Adolescent Health, having been its president (2017-21) and previously vice president for Oceania (2009-2017). She is a past member of the Board of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (2014) and a past president of SAHM's International Chapter, which awarded her its International Chapter award in 2008.

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Publications (467)