John Beard
John Beard, MBBS PhD, is Senior Advisor for Academic Affairs, as well as Senior Epidemiologist with the Academy’s Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies. He moved to New York from Australia in January 2006, and retains fractional appointments as Clinical Professor with the University of Sydney and Professor of Public and Environmental Health with Southern Cross University in Australia. Dr Beard has a medical degree with specialist qualifications in public health.
Prior to moving to an academic post, Dr Beard held senior positions in public health in Australia, including Manager of Public Health for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Acting Director of Disease Prevention for the state of New South Wales, and Director of Population Health for one of the state’s Area Health Services. In 2001, he was appointed head of the University of Sydney’s Department of Rural Health (Northern Rivers). Prof Beard is a Fellow of the Royal Institute for Public Health and the New York Academy of Medicine, and an alumnus of the US National Public Health Leadership Institute. He is a member of the international editorial board for the journal Public Health, and was a member of the International Scientific Committee for the 2007 conference "Social, Cultural and Economic Determinants of Health: International Perspectives for Global Action" held in Lisbon, Portugal.
Dr. Beard has been a member of, or chaired, many state and national committees in Australia including the Strategy and Planning Committee of the Australian Research Council Research Network in Spatially Integrated Social Science, the Australian Rural Health Education Network and the Public Health Steering Committee of the New South Wales Department of Health. He has been Chief Investigator on over $A9 million in competitive grants, and has extensive experience managing complex projects and organizations.
Dr Beard's research interests lie in the impact of the physical and social environment on health, with a particular focus on mental health and older adults. He is a member of the scientific steering committee of 45 and Up, a multi centre Australian cohort study of 250,000 subjects over the age of 45, and a Chief Investigator on a study nested in this cohort to explore the impact of social, economic and geographic disadvantage on health in mid to later life. He is also a Chief Investigator on another competitively funded cohort study exploring the influence of individual, family and environmental factors on mental health in 4000 rural families. Since 1998, he has led a project undertaking innovative and complex spatial analyses of key health outcomes in New South Wales. This research has explored the influence of a range of social and demographic factors on health outcomes including 1.3 million births, childhood leukaemia and acute myocardial infarction.
At the Academy, Dr. John Beard is working on a number of projects to explore the influence of the physical and social environment on mental health and aging.
Contact information: (212) 822-7378; jbeard@nyam.org
