Co-Lead
Global Public Health
Research Professor
Population Health Interventions
Qualifications
- PhD Community Health – University of Auckland, New Zealand, 2012
- MA Kinesiology – University of Western Ontario, Canada, 2007
- BA/BSc Psychology/Biology – University of Auckland, New Zealand, 2005
Background and experience
Lou is a public health scientist who studies how the places, systems and policies shaping everyday life can be changed to improve population health and reduce inequalities. Her research focuses on the structural drivers of physical activity, diet and related health outcomes, particularly urban, food and transport systems. She combines the evaluation of population health interventions with the development of methods for linking environmental, behavioural and health data and for synthesising complex evidence.
She joined IMS Epidemiology in 2013, initially working on a natural experimental evaluation of the health effects of a new urban motorway. She subsequently completed a fellowship exploring how interventions can affect multiple behaviours within their temporal and spatial contexts. After joining the Global Diet and Activity Research (GDAR) Network in 2018, she led a series of projects examining evolving food and transport environments in Africa and the Caribbean. She was co-director of the GDAR Network in 2024–25.
Before joining IMS Epidemiology, Lou completed an MA at the University of Western Ontario, examining potential mechanisms for exercise as a treatment for depression, and a PhD at the University of Auckland on physical activity and sedentary behaviour in children. She spent five years as a Research Fellow at the National Institute for Health Innovation in Auckland, where she worked primarily on pragmatic randomised controlled trials.
Current work and interests
Lou co-leads the Global Public Health group and is a senior scientist in the Population Health Interventions group at IMS Epidemiology. Her current work spans Africa, South and South-east Asia and includes low-, middle- and high-income settings. Across this portfolio, she investigates how urbanisation, changing food systems, transport and climate-related exposures reshape opportunities for healthy living.
Her current research includes Health-driven design for cities (HD4), which links environmental, behavioural and health data to inform urban planning and public health action in Singapore; work with the South Asia Biobank to investigate how environments shape behaviour and health; and research in Kenya examining how changing food environments and food practices are driving the nutrition transition. She works with governments, research partners and communities to generate evidence for structural and policy interventions that are feasible, equitable and relevant to practice. A cross-cutting focus of her work is developing meaningful and rigorous approaches to evaluating population-level change, including natural experimental, interdisciplinary and evidence synthesis methods.