Professor Adam Elshaug - new CHP Centre Director

It is our pleasure to announce the commencement of Professor Adam Elshaug to the position of Professor in Health Policy, jointly in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health and the Melbourne Medical School, and Director of the Centre for Health Policy in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, where he will be based. Unfortunately due to COVID related circumstances, Adam and his family finds themselves ‘stuck’ in the United States for the time being, but hope to make it back to Melbourne soon.

Adam is an outstanding researcher and policy advisor, specialising in reducing waste and optimising value in healthcare. In addition to a MPH, he received his PhD in 2007 from The University of Adelaide. He was a 2010-11 Harkness Fellow at the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and then served as NHMRC Sidney Sax Fellow in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy.

In his previous position at the University of Sydney, Adam was the Professor in Health Policy, HCF Research Foundation Professorial Fellow, and Co-Director of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy (MCHP) within the School of Public Health, where he headed the Value in Health Care Lab. Adam’s applied policy roles include as a ministerial appointee to the Australian Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review Taskforce, health economic and policy advisor to Cancer Australia and Board member of the NSW Bureau of Health Information (BHI). Adam is also a Visiting Fellow at The Brookings Institution in Washington DC.

Adam is the recipient of numerous research awards and over 140 invitations to address conferences, government, academic, insurance and health technology assessment groups internationally. He has collaborated to attract over $125 million in research funding and published over 100 book chapters, technical reports and peer review articles with first author publications in The Lancet (co-lead of the 2017 Right Care series), NEJM, BMJ, JAMA, Medical Journal of Australia, among others.

Adam is excited to contribute his applied health policy experience to the Faculty’s strategic ambition, “along with our healthcare partners and our State, to become one of the leaders in the use of data and informatics for improving health”. He sees Victoria and The University of Melbourne as uniquely positioned to advance co-designed research that will enhance health systems locally and globally.