Professor Angela Dawson is a public health social scientist with expertise in maternal and reproductive health service delivery to priority populations in Australia and low and lower-middle-income countries.

Angela was a NHMRC Translational research fellow examining approaches to counselling women with female genital mutilation (FGM) at the point of care and the recipient of the Sax prize for research impact.

She has undertaken research into the delivery of reproductive health services in humanitarian emergencies, the management and referral of women who have experienced domestic violence, and access to abortion and emergency contraceptive pills in Australia and internationally.

Her early work sparked her passion for public health in visual arts in disadvantaged communities in Cape Town, South Africa.

“I was painting murals and screen-printing T-shirts with health messages in the Townships of Gugulethu and Mitchell Plains,” she said.

“I realised how these community development projects that engaged people in building skills and sharing their stories could make a difference to people’s health and well-being.”

Her career has focused on applied public health research that focuses on interventions to enhance health service delivery.

Her work in the area of FGM has created tools to be used in interactions between women and health practitioners, especially during pregnancy.

“It’s such a sensitive issue, so people don’t talk about it and clinicians don’t understand the cultural context,” Angela said.

“This work deals with stigma, discrimination and cultural competence of the practitioners.” She developed a continuing professional education model for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG).

Angela currently leads an NHMRC Ideas grant examining the health of refugees over generations.

Angela is the co-chair of the Australasian Sexual and Reproductive Health Alliance (ASRHA), a Fellow of the Public Health Association of Australia, a member of the Interagency working group of reproductive health in crisis and an Associate Editor of the journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Angela has a special interest in Indigenous health and innovative approaches to delivering drug and alcohol services.

She has been involved in evaluating Aboriginal child health programs across NSW.

Angela was a chief investigator on an ARC-funded discovery project examining the use of qualitative research to inform policy and practice in Aboriginal health services research.

She is currently an investigator on the Centre for Research Excellence on Indigenous Health and Alcohol at the University of Sydney and an investigator on an NHMRC Ideas grant to improve data on methamphetamines and other drugs among Indigenous Australians.

She has also contributed to a NHMRC Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases grant examining the scaling up of a community-based alcohol education program in rural Sri Lankan villages.

Angela has over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has written numerous reports and papers for governments and United Nations bodies.

She has 25 years’ experience in the areas of Indigenous Australian and international health, primary health care services, workforce development, health promotion and health communication.

Angela was involved with the National Malaria Control Programme in five African countries, a Gates funded project with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

She has also designed programmes to develop dialogue and debate between journalists and public health practitioners in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Her future research direction is to better engage refugees in healthcare and design a needs-based roadmap for health services and refugees.

See: https://womeninscienceaust.org/portfolio/stemm-profile-associate-professor-angela-dawson-public-health-scientist-university-of-technology-sydney-sydney-nsw/

See https://www.saxinstitute.org.au/news/researchers-awarded-for-work-that-has-transformed-policy-and-practice/