Meet the Academy
Hosted by the Department of Paediatrics at The University of Melbourne, this series brings recognised leaders to share their personal and professional journey and provide insights into ‘what’ and ‘who’ influenced their lives and careers.
Professor Susan Sawyer AM MBBS MD, Director of the RCH Centre for Adolescent Health, recently shared some of the influences on her early career.
Event Recording
Susan holds the Geoff and Helen Handbury Chair of Adolescent Health in the Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne and is Director of the Centre for Adolescent at the Royal Children’s Hospital, a World Health Organization collaborating centre for adolescent health. Susan’s clinical, research, education and advocacy efforts have helped shape the field of adolescent health and medicine in Australia, in the Asia Pacific region, and globally.
In Australia, Susan led the development of the specialist accreditation framework for Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and leads a longstanding multidisciplinary postgraduate program in adolescent health and wellbeing at the University of Melbourne. She now leads the Child to Adult Cohort Study, that has annually tracked a cohort of 1200 children from 10-22 years old. She also leads a Centre for Research Excellence on driving global investment in adolescent health.
Susan has advanced two series on adolescent health for the Lancet (2007, 2012) and two Lancet Commissions on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing (2016, 2025) that have helped shape global and national investments in adolescent health. Susan led a team that developed the first global standards for health-promoting schools for WHO and UNESCO and recently worked with a team leading new global standards for quality health services for adolescents, and a new competency framework for health professionals working with adolescents, also for WHO.
Susan has just stepped down from a role as immediate past president of the International Association for Adolescent Health, which ends a nearly two decade engagement with IAAH. She has also had significant leadership roles with the (US) Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, including being a past president of the International Chapter of SAHM and a member of its Board of Directors. Susan is the current chair of the Victorian Government’s Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer committee, a member of the Academic Advisory Committee for the eSafety Commission that is overseeing the evaluation of the new Australian social media Minimum Age Act, and a member of the Government’s Advisory Committee for the 3rd National Child and Adolescent Mental Health Survey.