Margie's work focuses on how to prevent unintentional injuries, particularly in resource-strapped countries.

While road injuries are the biggest issue, Margie's work also canvases other significant problems of drowning, burns and falls, and identifies interventions that could save lives. Her research looks at what works, specifically in developing countries. It will provide evidence on how to prevent injuries before they happen. But it will also hope to look at the post-crash phase, working with nurses – who are the mainstay of healthcare provision in developing countries – to provide optimum treatment management. In some developing countries, traumatic injuries account for up to 70%-80% of the caseloads in emergency rooms. If you can stop these injuries upstream, there are enormous gains for healthcare systems, both financially and in terms of workforce needs.

Representing The George Institute for Global Health and South Africa, Margie is a member of the Commonwealth Road Safety Initiative Expert Panel and together with colleagues from Kenya and Canada leads the data analysis for the reports being developed ahead of the 3rd Ministerial level meeting in Sweden in February 2020 and the CHOG meeting in Rwanda. She is also a member of the Academic Expert Group for this Ministerial meeting, a group responsible for making an independent and scientific assessment of the progress made during the Decade of Action for Road Safety. This report is now available here. The Academic Expert Group will also recommend a road safety strategy for the period 2020-2030. Margie is also Chair of the Global Advisory Board for the Malawi Road Safety Research and Implementation Unit at the University of Malawi.

Prior to working at The George Institute, she was a nurse and an epidemiologist. She worked in a hospital in Cape Town, South Africa for many years before moving to the National Trauma Research Programme at the South African Medical Research Council. After that she was at the World Health Organization for 17 years, coordinating the Unintentional Injury Prevention unit. 

Julie Brown heads the Injury program at the George Institute for Global Health, Australia, is Co-Director of the Transurban Road Safety Centre at NeuRA, and  Professor, School of Population Health, UNSW. She works across the continuum of the public health model from defining problems, identifying risk and protective factors, developing and testing interventions to monitoring and evaluating the implementation of interventions designed to reduce the burden of injury, and has demonstrated expertise in multi-disciplinary research methods. Her career vision is to reduce the health burden attributable to injury by delivering tangible ways to prevent road crash-related injury and unintentional injury more broadly. Prior to completing her PhD at UNSW in 2008, she worked for >20 years in vehicle and equipment safety research and policy development for the NSW government. Insight into research needs for regulatory and policy development from this experience continues to frame her research.

Vikash R Keshri is Senior Research Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health. He has completed MBBS and MD in community medicine from the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (MGIMS), Wardha in India, and a short course in Health Policy Analysis from Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium.

Vikash has around 10 years of experience in public health and health systems besides a couple of years as a clinician. Prior to joining TGI, has worked extensively in various capacity in varied organizations, such as missionary hospital, Department of Community Medicine at MGIMS, FHI 360 for MP health sector reform project, State Resource Unit and Care INDIA in Bihar, the Centre for Health Policy at Asian Development Research Institute, Patna. He has experience of working closely with policymakers and health systems stakeholders in many states in India.

His professional and research interest revolve around health systems and policy research (HPSR), especially policy analysis, governance, human resource for health and organization of health services in resource-constrained settings.  At TGI, he is working on improving recovery outcome of Burns survivors with a systems approach applying the HPSR lens.

Dr Eden Barrett is a public health nutrition researcher, academic and dietitian with expertise in nutrition, dietetics and food policy. She is a Research Fellow in the Food Policy division at the George Institute for Global Health, a Conjoint Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, and holds a co-appointment at the Food is Medicine Institute and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, Boston.

Dr Barrett leads a global research program that uses large-scale food composition data to evaluate the nutritional quality and sustainability of the global food supply. Her work advances the development and evaluation of evidence-based tools and policies, including nutrient profiling systems and front-of-pack labelling strategies, aimed at supporting healthier diets and reducing diet-related disease risk across diverse populations.

She has presented her research at major international conferences and received significant funding and awards, including support from the National Heart Foundation of Australia. In addition to her research, Dr Barrett contributes to academic leadership through active involvement in several national and international committees. Within her institutions, she founded the CRE Human and Planetary Health Early- and Mid-Career Researcher Group at The George Institute and serves on the UNSW School of Health Sciences Research Committee.

Maarinke is the Program Lead for the Global Thought Leadership Program, in the Impact and Engagement team. She drives research impact by working with researchers and other subject matter experts and translating knowledge for different audiences, complimenting advocacy efforts on preventable disease and injury. Maarinke joined the George Institute in 2018 to develop the program, establishing activities such as data visualisation, podcasts, and interactive stories. The Global Thought Leadership program now includes the Emerging Thought Leader Program -coaching early-mid career researchers and subject matter experts-  and managing the Distinguished Fellow Program, engaging and collaborating with a network of renowned experts around the globe.

Prior to this Maarinke worked for 8 years in medicines education, after 12 years in insurance, finance and IT. Maarinke has a Masters in International Law and International Relations, Graduate Certificate in Health Policy and Health Communications, and a Bachelor of Business with double major in Marketing and Management.