VicHealth researcher: Anna Peeters
"We need complete information on the likely health burden of overweight and obesity in Australia"
Dr Anna Peeters of Monash University is developing models to measure the long-term impact of obesity on health. Her work will help to design strategies that will decrease the burden of disease associated with obesity.
Research topic: Long-term implications of the increasing prevalence and duration of obesity for health in Australia: an aid to more effective and targeted prevention
Although we know that obesity increases the risks of disease and death there are no comprehensive strategies to reduce the harm associated with overweight. One of the reasons for this is that obesity affects many different aspects of our health, and these often don’t become apparent until later in life. It is therefore difficult to predict what strategies would have the greatest benefit. Anna is developing models to comprehensively measure the long-term health burden associated with overweight and obesity in Australia. This will make it easier to analyse which strategies would best decrease this burden.
Anna is a Senior Research Fellow in the Monash University Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine. She has returned to Australia after working for five years in the Department of Public Health, Erasmus University, The Netherlands, to apply her work relating obesity and life expectancy measures to Australia.
This project should provide more complete information on the likely health burden in the Australian community associated with current trends in overweight and obesity. We expect the outcomes of this research to help policy-makers and the community to choose obesity prevention and treatment interventions with the greatest likelihood of decreasing this health burden.
“VicHealth has provided both financial and intellectual support for my work,” said Anna. “With this unique combination of funding, help in establishing collaborationsand support to communicate my research results I feel that I am able to do the best work possible in this important area.”