He has specialist professional qualifications in clinical medicine and public health, and a PhD in epidemiology. His research interests concern the application of epidemiology to informing decision making in clinical medicine, public health, and health system policy and planning. His major area of focus is the prevention and control of chronic disease especially cardiovascular disease.

His research experience includes cohort studies (eg Determinants of thrombotic risk factors for cardiovascular disease in the elderly; Genotype, clotting factors and risk of re-infarction; sub-studies within the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women’s Health; Environments for Health Living study), case-control studies (eg, eosinophilic enteritis and dog hookworm, risk factors for campylobacter gastroenteritis), large scale randomized controlled trials (eg consultant pharmacist intervention to improve medication use in long stay institutions), development and evaluation of community interventions (Greek Australian Heart Study, Healthy Hearts West, Queensland Chronic Disease Strategy), community surveys using both face-to-face, mail and CATI techniques (eg Western Sydney Risk Factor Prevalence Surveys, Quality of Care in Diabetes Study), and qualitative research (eg Family Wellbeing program evaluation; Development of a health consumer effectiveness tool; participant observation study of medical student-patient interactions). Experience also includes the development and assessment of economic evaluations of health care interventions.