This website is intended to showcase my research work, describe my opinions about public and global health, and introduce non-statisticians and the lay public to global health data analysis. I hope that through this website I can make my research accessible to the general public, to non-statisticians, and to junior researchers. I also hope to give some insights into how I work on data, what kinds of problems we work on in global health, and how to use that data.

In the last decade the field of global health has been revolutionized by the availability of high quality data, and the growth of computational power to be able to analyze that data in detail. For people outside of some narrow disciplines of public health and statistics, however, it can be difficult to understand how to interpret all that data, and to make judgements about when the data is being analyzed well. I hope that this website will help to show lay readers how to make judgements about statistical methods, and give some information about how the process of statistical analysis in global health research works.

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About me

I am a statistician who has been working in public health for 30 years, currently living in Tokyo, Japan as professor of biostatistics at the Graduate School of Public Health, St. Luke's International University.

Professional background

I completed a Masters in mathematical physics at the University of Adelaide, but left physics to work as a research assistant in public health. The first 7 years of my public health career were spent at clinics providing services to injecting drug users, street-based sex workers and "at risk" youth. In particular I provided data analysis and research support at The Kirketon Road Centre. During my time there I helped to establish the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre, a project of which I am still very proud.

After this time in clinical support I moved into academia. Along the way I picked up a Masters in Public Health, a Masters in Statistics and a PhD in health sciences. I moved to Japan in 2006, first to do a PhD (as a Monbukagakusho scholarship recipient), and then, from 2010, as an academic. I joined the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine as an assistant professor in 2011 (just before the Great East Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster), was promoted to associate professor in 2016, and moved to professor of biostatistics at St. Luke's International University in 2018.

During my career I have worked on multiple major research projects that have been influential in their policy area, using statistical analysis to understand the impact of unplanned events and policy interventions on health outcomes globally, nationally and sub-nationally. Some of my major projects are listed later in this page.

Personal background

I am Australian, but I have three nationalities through birth (New Zealand), parentage (UK) and choice (Australia). I migrated to Adelaide, Australia with my family when I was 13, lived and worked in Sydney, Australia since I was 20, and moved to Japan in 2006. I have lived in Japan since then, except for a brief accidental period living in London, where I worked at the King's Fund. I can read and speak Japanese, though not fluently.

I have two cats, Arashi and Rover. I have been an avid player of tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) my entire life, and have been practicing martial arts since I was 19. I trained Jeet Kune Do, Arnis and kick-boxing for about 10 years, before focusing on kick-boxing. I have an amateur fight record of 1 fight, 1 loss. I currently train at Crosspoint Kichijoji.

Major research projects

I characterize my research field as quantitative health system assessment, the use of statistical analysis, simulation and modeling to understand how policies and interventions affect population health through the impact they have on health systems. I am particularly familiar with the use of statistical methods for assessing unplanned events. Some of my major current and past projects are listed here.

• God, guns and drugs: Using large national datasets to understand the role of firearms and illegal drugs on mortality in the USA, which is experiencing a sudden stagnation of life expectancy due to rapid increases in deaths from these causes.
• Suicide policy and interventions: I have conducted research on suicide death in Australia, Japan, Europe and the USA. I am particularly interested in the role of anti-violence and suicide prevention strategies in Australia, which I think were very successful in the mid-1990s
• COVID-19's impact: I have close collaborators in China, with whom I worked in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic first started. We published early research warning about the infectiousness of the disease and the importance of lockdowns, and then shifted to studying Japanese and Vietnamese responses to COVID-19. I am now working on a project to understand the long-term changes in health that have been caused by widespread infection with COVID-19.
• HIV policy in east Asia: For 15 years I have been using mathematical modeling to understand how we can eliminate HIV in China and Japan. I contribute to the UNAIDS global AIDS monitoring estimates for Japan, and with my Japanese colleagues provide policy recommendations to the Japanese ministry of health, labour and welfare
• The Great East Japan Earthquake: For about 7 years after the great east Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident I collaborated with a small town in Fukushima, called Minamisoma, to assess the effectiveness of post-disaster recovery efforts and develop new policy for living in areas affected by a nuclear accident
• The Heroin Shortage: I was involved in a major project from 2003- 2006 to assess the impact of a sudden shortage of heroin on health and welfare in Australia. This had a huge impact on understanding of drug policy

You can read about these projects and their associated publications through the links above.

Health for all

My work is quantitative, using statistics and data to understand how policies and interventions affect the health of the population, but all my research is intended to help us make progress toward's the World Health Organization goal of health for all. This goal was introduced as part of the Declaration of Alma Ata, in 1978:

A main social target of governments, international organizations and the whole world community in the coming decades should be the attainment by all peoples of the world by the year 2000 of a level of health that will permit them to lead a socially and economically productive life

Achieving this goal requires us to pay attention to health inequality and to make sure that when we make policy (both within and outside the healthcare field) we take into account the effect that policy will have on social inequality. My research, in particular, has always been concerned with the health of marginalized groups, people who are excluded from society or prevented from gaining the full benefits of our social order. It is my hope that we can bring all of society with us as we make progress towards health for all.

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