Associate ProfessorFiona Stanaway

Fiona Stanaway is a medical doctor and clinical epidemiologist who is passionate about the use of research to address unequal health outcomes within ethnically diverse populations. She has an MBBS (Hons) (University of Queensland), an MPH (University of Sydney), and a PHD in epidemiology (University of Sydney).

She currently leads work using Census-data linkage to generate unique insights into ethnic inequalities in the incidence, prognosis and evidence-based management of cardiovascular disease. This work also includes examining the impact of climate change on these inequalities. The unique linked data resource used for this work brings together data on ethnicity from the Australian Census with state and commonweath health data. This work is the basis of the MRFF funded Beyond Country of Brith Project which aims to capture health inequalities in Australian individuals whose ethnic diversity is not captured by their country of birth. She has also led work on the translation and cultural adaption of instruments to measure social isolation and loneliness in older Chinese migrants in Sydney.

Fiona has worked at the University of Sydney since 2003, based in the School of Public Health. She brings her methodological expertise to the training of the next generation of health professionals through her involvement in the University of Sydney Graduate Medical Program and her role as Associate Professor in the Master of Clinical Epidemiology Program. She has over 15 years of experience in teaching clinicians how to interpret evidence and apply it to their clinical practice. Her excellent standard of teaching has been recognised by receiving a University of Sydney Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Teaching and a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning from the Australian Awards for University Teaching in 2020. 

Fiona’s commitment to community engagement is exemplified in her role over many years in providing health screening services for those applying for Australian visas. Fiona was born in Australia but has also lived and worked in Taiwan and France and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Italian and French, in addition to her native English. She has also convinced herself that she can speak Spanish after watching multiple Spanish series on Netflix.