Associate Professor Laurie Brown

Associate Professor Laurie Brown is one of Australasia’s leading health modellers. She is a highly experienced medical geographer, health services researcher and epidemiologist, having over 20 years experience in health policy and practice and researching the impacts of demographic, social and economic change on health status and health services utilisation and expenditure.

Associate Professor Brown is currently Health Research Director at the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, heading NATSEM’s health and ageing-related research activities where she is playing a key role in pioneering the development of health microsimulation models in Australia and internationally.

Prior to joining NATSEM in September 2001, Associate Professor Brown was responsible for the cross-disciplinary teaching of geography of health courses, economic and development geography, and population and urban studies at the University of Wollongong. In the early 1990s, she was a consultant to the New Zealand Department of Health, providing expert advice on health policy changes in relation to the access and provision of ‘frontline’ health services. She was a Research Fellow with the Lipid and Diabetes Research Group, at the Christchurch School of Medicine in New Zealand and from 1989-91, was a New Zealand Health Research Council Research Postdoctoral Training Fellow in Diabetes.