University of New South Wales, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre
Professor Louisa Degenhardt first commenced work at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), Faculty of Medicine, UNSW in 1998 and has worked across a wide range of projects examining the epidemiology of illicit drug use, comorbid mental health problems, and illicit drug surveillance. Her PhD, completed in 2001, examined the comorbidity of drug use and mental health problems in the Australian population. Louisa has published over 310 peer reviewed papers, 110 technical reports and monographs, three books and 35 book chapters. Her H-index is 44 in Web of Science, 62 in Google Scholar.
From 2001 to 2008 she established and expanded national drug surveillance and strategic early warning systems across Australia. This work included the establishment of the National Illicit Drug Indicators Project (NIDIP), which comprises the analysis of routine data collections across Australia that collect data on drug use, harms and supply; she took over the running of the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) in 2001. She also expanded a pilot of the Ecstasy and related Drugs Reporting System (EDRS) into a national system in 2003, and oversaw all these systems until she took up an NHMRC Fellowship in 2008.