I am an injury epidemiologist and public health physician. I was appointed as founding Director of Research Centre for Injury Studies at Flinders University in 1997 and have been the Director of the National Injury Surveillance Unit (NISU) since 1990. I am active nationally and internationally in the areas of measurement and classification of injury, injury burden and determinants of injury in populations, and the descriptive epidemiology of injury for public health purposes.

My main areas of research interest are injury prevention and control, and methods and infrastructure for public health surveillance, including classifications and data linkage. My publications deal with many aspects of injury, including injury severity and outcomes, road safety, the safety of Indigenous Australians, suicide and self-harm, alcohol and injury, occupational safety, sports injury, spinal cord injury and the safety of health care. While most of my work has been quantitative, I have also participated in some qualitative research. As at December 2018, I am an author of 87 peer-reviewed journal papers, and many other reports, mostly publications of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

The Research Centre for Injury Studies operates the National Injury Surveillance Unit (NISU) of the AIHW. NISU undertakes public health surveillance of injury at the national level to support injury prevention and control, and provides much of the statistical information on which injury prevention policy and programs in Australia rely. The NISU program also produces the main national statistical reports on non-fatal serious road injury for the Australian Government agency responsible for road safety. NISU also does technical work on injury data sources and methods.

With Dr Kavi Bhalla, I led the Injury Expert Group in the Global Burden of Diseases 2010 project. This led to an active collaborative network of injury researchers, now part of the International Collaborative Effort (ICE) on Injury Statistics, who are are developing theory and doing research to enable better measurement of the impact and burden of injury. I am researching outcomes of injury using prospective follow-up with Professor Belinda Gabbe (Monash) and others and using data linkage to improve the measurement of non-fatal road injuries.