Maxine Whittaker

Background

About Maxine Whittaker

Maxine Whittaker,(https://research.jcu.edu.au/portfolio/maxine.whittaker) a public health physician, medical anthropologist, health systems/implementation academic and researcher works on improving the health systems and services to increase accessibility/acceptability of quality services to populations including through One Health approaches. Maxine is the Civil Society Representative for the Global Fund Regional Artemisinin Initiative 3 of the Greater Mekong Subregion (2021-23). Maxine has worked on health systems strengthening for vector-borne disease prevention, surveillance and response, and policy translation from implementation research, and in developing courses to support programme implementation/advocacy. She is Chair of the WPRO TAG on Reaching the Unreached, Director of WHO Collaborating Centre for Vector Borne and Neglected Tropical Diseases, a member of Australian Government’s Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security and of Queensland Government’s Biosecurity Ministerial Advisory Committee, She was Dean of the College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences at James Cook University (2016- 2021), co-coordinator of the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network (APMEN), Director of the Australian Initiative for the Control and Elimination of Malaria and Pacific Malaria Initiative Support Centre and Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Health Information Systems. on the Board of Trustees of the icddr,b, Research Project Review Panel of WHO Special Programme Of Research, Development And Research Training In Human Reproduction, founding member of ExpandNet ( focusing on scaling up from research into policy and practice). She has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, several project documents, policy briefings, briefing papers, book chapters and commissioned papers, and since 2010 has been a Principal/Chief/Co-Investigator in more than worth of national/international competitive/industry/research grants. She has lived in Bangladesh, Zambia, Zimbabwe and worked in Cambodia, China, Fiji, Indonesia, Kenya, Lao PDR, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tanzania, Thailand, Tonga, Vanuatu, and Vietnam. She has extensive experience in project and programme design in health and development (One Health, infectious diseases and sexual/reproductive health, gender) with government, non-governmental and international development partners. In 2017 she was awarded the Royal Australasian College of Physicians International Medal in recognition of outstanding service in developing countries.