Professor Maxine A. Whittaker

Public Health Physician, Medical Anthropologist and Health Systems Researcher and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Vector Borne and Neglected Tropical Disease, Australia

Biography

Dr Maxine Whittaker, a public health physician, applied medical anthropologist and health systems teaching/research academic is the Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Vector Borne and Neglected Tropical Diseases. She focuses on a) improving accessibility and acceptability in/of health systems/services and b) One Health social sciences and systems.

She works with the Civil Society Platform for health equity and inclusiveness in the Greater Mekong Subregion and supports strategic planning/GEDSI for mosquito-borne diseases in the Pacific. She holds roles with Partnerships for a Healthy Region Technical Reference Group (Australia); Biosecurity Ministerial Advisory Committee (Queensland);  Monash University’s Centre to Impact AMR Advisory Council; Chair Reaching the Unreached Technical Working Group (WHO WPRO); Senior Editor CABI One Health; Independent Reference Group member for Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, contributor to FAO RAP discussion paper/information brief/workshops on Health, Wildlife and Livelihoods and Co-Author/Editor of One Health: the added value of integrated health approaches 1st/2nd editions (CABI).   

Since 2010, Dr. Whittaker has been a Principal/ Co-Investigator of national/international competitive/industry/other research grants (Google Scholar h index 35, i10 index 81). She has lived/worked in Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and worked in several Asian, African and Pacific nations on health/development projects/programme design.