Dr Caroline Homer

Caroline is Co-Program Director of Women and Children’s Health and Co-Head for the Women’s and Newborn’s Health Working Group at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne. She is also the Visiting Distinguished Professor of Midwifery at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Caroline has an international reputation as a scholar and leader in maternal and newborn health. She has led research and development projects especially in reproductive, maternal and newborn care, human resources for health workforce development and midwifery education. She has more than 25 years of experience as a clinician, educator, researcher and leader. She has more than 240 peer reviewed publications and has contributed to more than 10 books.

Caroline has been involved in the development and evaluation of midwifery and maternal and newborn health services in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. She has worked on education, research and innovation across Australia and also in countries such as Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and with UNFPA across the small island nations of the South Pacific. She has been a lead writer in a number of the State of the World’s Midwifery Reports.

Caroline is a member of the Human Reproductive Program’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (WHO). She is a Ministerial appointee to the Council of Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), a member of NHMRC Women in Health Science Committee and a Ministerial appointee to the Victorian Consultative Committee on Maternal and Perinatal Morbidity and Mortality. She is the Co-Chair of the National Expert Advisory Executive for the Pregnancy Care Guidelines (Australian Department of Health).

In 2017, she was awarded an Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to medicine in the field of midwifery as a clinician, researcher, author and educator, through the development of worldwide education standards, and to professional organisations.