Professor Kent Buse

Kent is a political-economist with research interests in health policy analysis and the evidence to policy pathway.

Kent joined the Institute in 2020 to lead the newly established Healthier Societies program. The program aims to support governments, markets and communities to establish and deliver favourable conditions to enable the health and wellbeing of people, planet and economies – and to fix systems not people, as Kent has argued. It does so through cutting-edge research, evaluation, policy development and knowledge co-creation with communities, policy makers and within markets. It also delivers knowledge to support advocacy and accountability mechanisms. The Program focusses mainly on the social and structural determinants of health, with research teams covering food policy, injury prevention, mental health, commercial determinants of health, planetary health, health equity, health and human rights, community engagement and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health.

Kent has published widely on global health governance and architecture, health policy, planning and financing, population level approaches to control of NCDs, HIV and sexual and reproductive health, health and human rights, as well as on equity, inclusion, and accountability. He authored the leading graduate textbook ‘Making Health Policy’. He served as Chief of Policy, Strategy and Research at UNAIDS for over ten years and is the co-founder and co-director of Global Health 50/50, the world’s leading authority on gender in global health. Kent also serves on the Policy Committee of the World Obesity Federation and WHO’s informal expert committee on the Commercial Determinants of Health.