Professor Louise Baur graduated in medicine from The University of Sydney in 1981 and subsequently trained in general paediatrics in Sydney and London. She was awarded a PhD in the area of paediatric nutrition from The University of Sydney in 1993. Louise is Professor of Child & Adolescent Health at The University of Sydney, and Associate Dean of The Children’s Hospital at Westmead Clinical School. She is a consultant paediatrician and Head of Weight Management Services at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, where she runs multidisciplinary clinical services for obese and pre-diabetic children and adolescents. Louise is also a member of the Prevention Research Collaboration based at the University of Sydney. The latter group undertakes a range of policy-relevant research in the areas of obesity, nutrition and physical activity.
Professor Baur’s research interests include the prevention of childhood obesity, the antecedents of obesity and the metabolic syndrome in childhood, the complications of paediatric obesity and the effective management of obesity and related disorders in a variety of clinical settings.
Professor Baur is on the Editorial Board of Pediatric Obesity (and was its Founding Editor-in-Chief from 2005-2010), is Founding Director of the Australasian Child & Adolescent Obesity Research Network and is a member of the NHMRC’s Prevention & Community Health Committee. She has a range of roles with the World Obesity Federation and is currently a member of the World Health Organization’s Working Group on the Science and Evidence for Ending Childhood Obesity. Louise is also a Director of World Vision Australia.
In 2010, Professor Baur was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) “for service to medicine, particularly in the field of paediatric obesity as a researcher and academic, and to the community through support for a range of children’s charities”.