Jacqui Webster

Jacqui Webster (BA Soc, MA Development, PhD Public Health) is a Professor of Public Health and is currently funded through an National Health and Medical Research Council Investigator Grant (Leadership 2) on strengthening the impact of food policy research in Australia and globally. Her primary research interests are on programs to reduce cardio-metabolic diseases including food and water security and population salt reduction programs. She is currently leading an NHMRC IDEAS grant on strengthening and monitoring implementation of a a community-led program to improve food and water security in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia. She has secured consecutive Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases grants through the NHMRC to scale-up food policies to reduce diabetes and hypertension in the Pacific Islands, in collaboration with Fiji National University, Deakin University and the University of Sydney. Jacqui is also involved in two DFAT Regional Health Partnership projects and is currently part of a regional collaboration with UNSW and Northwestern University aimed at improving measurement of individual experiences of food and water security with a view to strengthening community-led solutions.

From March 2023-24, Jacqui took a year off work to cycle across Europe and Africa. She has just published Two Bugs on Bikes - our middle-aged gap year cycling across Europe and Africa (Hembury Books 2025). There are strong public health elements throughout the book, reflecting on the social, public health and environmental issues that she witnessed up close when cycling through Africa.