Distinguished Professor of Health Sciences; Director, Centre for Global Health and Equity, Swinburne University of Technology.

Richard is an epidemiologist and health services researcher. He holds a prestigious Australian NHMRC Principal Research Fellowship focusing on the global implementation of health literacy-informed interventions to reduce inequalities and assist countries to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

He is an adviser to the World Health Organisation and is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2018 top 1% most influential researcher globally in the cross-field category). He holds Honorary Professor positions at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Thammasat University, Thailand. He was the health literacy consultant to the WHO Independent High-Level Commission on Noncommunicable Diseases.

Current research and impact:

Richard and his team have a track record in building new methods and tools. These include a range of measurement and quality improvement tools (e.g., HLQ, eHLQ, heiQ, READHY, CHAT, OrgHLR) and the Ophelia (Optimising Health Literacy and Access) Process – a systematic approach to co-designing and implementing health literacy informed interventions that are needed, wanted and implementable.

His team developed the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ), one of the most widely used health literacy tools in the world. The rigour of the psychometric testing of the HLQ in different cultures and languages has been exceptional (Europe, Africa to Asia). This is important as the HLQ supports decision-making about clinical trials and through government-sponsored National Health Surveys, multi-national evaluations, and numerous quality improvement initiatives. It is applied in over 500 research projects in over 60 countries.

Exciting new initiatives and ideas:

Richard actively is seeking to move health literacy from unidimensional testing and deficit approaches, to contemporary co-design and strength-based health literacy development approaches that actually reduce inequality. This is expressed in the World Health Organization’s National Health Literacy Development Programme and collaborative partnerships across Asia, Africa, North and South America and Europe.