Louisa Jane Degenhardt

Scientia Professor Louisa Jane Degenhardt is a leading epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), serving as Deputy Director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) within the Faculty of Medicine. She holds honorary Professorial appointments at the University of Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation.

• PhD in epidemiology (2003), focusing on drug use and mental disorder comorbidity in Australia
• Over 560 peer-reviewed papers, 120 technical reports, three books, and 45 book chapters
• H-index: 80 (Scopus), 104 (Google Scholar)

Her research spans illicit drug epidemiology, comorbid mental health issues, and surveillance systems. She leads studies on opioid antagonist treatment mortality, pharmaceutical opioid use in chronic pain (POINT cohort), and gene-environment interactions in addiction. She also investigates risk behaviors in youth through local/national cohort studies.

Louisa has chaired the Secretariat for the UN Reference Group on Injecting Drug Use and HIV (2007–2010) and co-chaired the Expert Group for mental disorders and illicit drug use in the 2010 Global Burden of Disease study. Her work includes indirect prevalence estimation, data linkage studies, and international drug use epidemiology.

Scientific Awards:

• UNSW Scientia Professor
• NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow

She contributes to the Drug Trends program at NDARC (rejoining in 2018) and collaborates with WHO/UNAIDS on global drug use risks. Her methodological expertise includes case-control studies, cohort analysis, and policy-relevant research.