Professor Anthony J McMichael

Professor Anthony J McMichael, medical graduate (Adelaide University) and epidemiologist, is an NHMRC Australia Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University, Canberra. He was previously Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1994-2001.

His epidemiological research has spanned occupational diseases; diet, nutrition and disease (10 years with CSIRO Division of Human Nutrition); and environmental influences on health and disease. Over the past decade he has been an international leader – including being an advisor to the World Health Organization, other UN agencies and World Bank – in the development of research priorities and methods on the health risks of climate change. This has included pursuing his particular interest in the changing global ecology of infectious disease patterns and risks.

Professor McMichael has recently worked, via both research and published commentary, to connect the domain of public health research and health promotion with the wider emerging agenda on global changes, urbanization, climate change and sustainability. He contributed to the Federal Government’s recent Sustainable Cities 2025 enquiry and strategy formulation.

During 1993-2007 he played a central role in the scientific work of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of health impacts. (He therefore shared around one two-thousandth of the 2007 Nobel peace Prize!) He co-chairs the “Global Environmental Change and Human Health” project of the International Council of Science (ICSU). He is a Director of the Climate Institute (Australia) and a member of the Australian Climate Group (updated national policyoriented report to be released in April 2008). His books include Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures (Cambridge University Press 2001) and Climate Change and Human Health: Risks and Responses (WHO, 2003).