Following more than three years as Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Michael Kidd AO, has been appointed as the inaugural director of the new Centre for Future Health Systems, UNSW, Australia. Through a strategic partnership with the University of Oxford, he will also start in a new role in a joint position in NDPCHS focusing upon Global Primary Care and Future Health Systems.
As one of the leading centres for academic primary care in the world, we are delighted to welcome Michael to a department that champions the highest quality approaches to primary healthcare, whether in research, teaching, training or health system change. Despite our scale, our impact on primary care internationally is limited by the enormity of the challenges facing primary care and we expect Michael, in this new joint appointment with UNSW in Sydney, to help us widen and further develop our contributions to solutions. Primary care is a critical element for delivering better health and social care in most countries on the planet but has the least investment by heath systems. We look forward to Michael’s appointment helping us deliver further on this global agenda
- Professor Richard Hobbs, NDPCHS Head of Department
Prof Kidd served as Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Principal Medical Advisor at Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care since February 2020, with involvement in the development and implementation of the nation’s primary care response to COVID-19, the rapid implementation of telehealth to the whole population, and many other initiatives. Before returning to Australia at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was based in Canada where he was the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Family Medicine and Primary Care, Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, and Senior Innovation Fellow with Canada’s Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care.
A long serving consultant with the World Health Organization, and a past president of both the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, and the World Organization of Family Doctors, Prof Kidd is an internationally recognised expert in primary health care. He has over 35 years’ experience working as a general practitioner in urban, rural and remote practice in Australia and overseas, with special interests in the care of people with HIV, mental health and Indigenous health. He has held several past senior academic roles including as foundation Professor of Primary Care Reform at the Australian National University, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University, and Professor and Head of the Department of General Practice at the University of Sydney.
He is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, and has research expertise in global primary care, digital health, health care safety and quality, the primary care management of COVID-19, HIV and sexually transmissible infections, and the translation of research into health policy.
In the recent King’s Birthday Honours List, Prof Kidd was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.
Prof Kidd will start in his new role on 17 July 2023.