About the SIG
Health Equity Australasia is the Health Equity Special Interest Group — a community of researchers, practitioners and students who share a commitment to understanding and reducing unfair differences in health. Our home is in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, and our doors are open to anyone in the world working on, or curious about, health equity research.
Health equity research spans health economics, epidemiology, public health, health services research and the social sciences. It asks not only whether policies and interventions improve health, but whose health they improve — and whether they narrow or widen the gaps between groups. The SIG exists to strengthen this field: sharpening methods, connecting people, and bringing equity evidence closer to decision-making.
SIG Convenors
The SIG is convened by three health economists working on equity across Australia.
Dr Anita Lal is a Victorian Cancer Agency Early Career Research fellow at Deakin Health Economics, Deakin University. Her PhD, awarded in 2018, examined ways of incorporating equity into cost-effectiveness analysis for obesity prevention policies. Her current research focuses on health-related policies and programs to reduce inequities in healthcare utilisation and the distribution of cancers. Her fellowship, funded by the Victorian Government, is focused on the impacts and cost-effectiveness of targeted programs to increase bowel, breast and cervical cancer screening in under-screened culturally and linguistically diverse groups in Victoria. She is a member of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Alliance Equity Advisory Group.
Dennis Petrie is a Professor in the Centre for Health Economics, Monash University. He has published extensively on the economics of illicit drugs, smoking, alcohol, disability, cancer, the longitudinal measurement and evaluation of health inequalities and has led a large number of economic evaluations of healthcare interventions including alongside RCTs. He specialises in analysing large and complex data sets to improve health policy decisions with a focus on reducing health inequities.
Dr Shan Jiang is a Research Fellow in health economics at Deakin University, Australia. His research focuses on equity-informative economic evaluation, especially distributional cost-effectiveness analysis (DCEA), economic evaluation methodology, and advanced economic evaluation modelling, with 50+ peer-reviewed publications in journals such as JAMA Network Open, Genetics in Medicine, BMJ Global Health, Value in Health, and PharmacoEconomics. One publication was selected for the Value in Health Paper of the Year Award (2025). He is a Brocher Foundation Visiting Research Fellow and Adjunct Research Fellow at the Shanghai Health Development Research Center.
Membership is free. Members can create a profile in the directory, write blog posts, share their research, and post to the community noticeboard. We warmly welcome students and early-career researchers.
Contact the convenors
Questions about the SIG, ideas for seminars, or interest in presenting your work? Send us a message — we read everything and reply as soon as we can.