Robyn McDermott is a NHMRC Practitioner Fellow and Professor of Public Health in the School of Health Sciences and the Sansom Institute for Health Research.
Robyn joined UniSA in August 2004 as Pro Vice Chancellor and Vice President in the Division of Health Sciences and held this role for five years until 2009 when she became Foundation Director of the State-wide Data Linkage Unit, SA/NT Datalink. SA/NT DataLink is a joint venture between the three South Australian universities, the South Australian government and the NT Government. This collaboration is hosted by UniSA. After three years Robyn stepped down as Director of SA/NT Datalink and now maintains a role as Professor: Public Health in School of Population Health. Robyn also holds the position of Director of the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention at James Cook University.
Previously, Robyn has worked as a primary care clinician in rural New South Wales, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland as well as managing refugee health care and public health programs from 1988 to 1992 in China, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. She has worked with Indigenous communities in central and northern Australia to understand the causes and consequences of rapid changes in living conditions and nutrition on health status, and how to intervene to improve health outcomes.
As a medical epidemiologist and public health physician in north Queensland from 1995 to 2004, she built capacity in community-level health information systems for rural Indigenous services. She also initiated the Chronic Disease Strategy and enhanced primary care programs adopted by Queensland Health in 2002.