Prof Alex Brown

Chief Investigator and Centre Director

Wardliparingga Aboriginal Research Unit, SAHMRI

Professor Alex Brown is an Indigenous doctor, completing his Bachelor of Medicine in 1995. He undertook his Masters of Public Health in Israel in 1998, and is a Fellow of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. He has recently completed his PhD thesis on chronic disease and depression in Aboriginal men in Central Australia. Prof Brown has 10 yrs of involvement in Aboriginal Health, education, policy, communicable disease control, service delivery and public health, epidemiology, research and research ethics.

Alex has spent the last six years developing a program of research with a particular focus on cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes and rheumatic heart disease. Between 1999-2003 he ran the Centre for Disease Control in Alice Springs, then was employed as the Senior Research Fellow for Menzies School of Health Research. In 2007, he commenced as Head, Baker IDI Central Australia: Indigenous Health Research and in July 2012 was appointed as the Indigenous Health Theme Leader of the new South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI).

Alex represents Aboriginal issues on national committees and at national forums. His work on psychosocial determinants of CVD in Indigenous men, depression in Indigenous men, quality of care and outcomes following ACS (Acute Coronary Syndrome), KVC (Kanyini Vascular Collaboration) programme, the polypill trial in Aboriginal people, and landmark survey of heart failure in Aboriginal communities place him at the forefront of a key research group for chronic disease in Aboriginal people.