Queen’s Birthday Honours for QIMR’s Professor Adèle Green

Professor Adèle Green, Head of the Cancer and Populations Studies Group and Deputy Director of QIMR was awarded the Companion in the Order of Australia at recent Queen’s Birthday Honours Celebrations. The award was for eminent achievement and merit of the highest degree in service to Australia and to humanity at large. Adèle has made a major contribution to medical research internationally by significantly expanding knowledge about the causes and prevention of melanoma and skin cancer and ovarian cancer.

When asked: why medicine and why epidemiology and public health research? She responded by saying this came from a desire to study both the arts and the biological sciences and that these fields blend art and science. Also she believes that the practice of medicine and medical research are both highly rewarding – work that benefits others and takes you outside yourself.

When still a medical student Adèle worked part-time as a nurse’s aide in the Royal Brisbane and Ipswich Hospitals, and as a researcher in public health medicine with Douglas Gordon, Foundation Professor of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Queensland. It was the latter experience that established the direction of her future medical research career in epidemiology (the science of finding the causes and preventing illness in populations).

Besides research, Adèle has also contributed to science and public health through service on a wide range of related councils and committees. She is a member of the National Health and Medical Research Council and has served on or chaired many NHMRC Committees over the last ten years as well as many scientific advisory and management committees including of the Australian Cancer Research Foundation, the National Cancer Control Initiative and The George Institute (formerly the Institute of International Health). She is also the Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Committee for Health Inequalities Research Collaboration in Australia and a member of the Epidemiology Standing Committee for the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection.

Adèle is highly committed to nurturing and training junior medical researchers. She is also dedicated to supporting the improvement of Aboriginal and Torres Islander health through research; and to drawing attention to and alleviating the health burden suffered by those who are socially and economically disadvantaged in this country.