ProfessorStephen Bell

Prof Steve Bell is a social scientist with 25 years’ experience tackling global health challenges in settings across Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. He works respectfully with not-for-profits, public institutions and community organisations, using innovative, inclusive, people-centred approaches to identify sustainable solutions to critical health challenges and accelerate health equity.

He is Head, International Development, and Co-Head, Global Adolescent Health at the Burnet Institute. His work brings together transdisciplinary social science and socio‐ecolo­gical thinking to understand what works (or not) in global health. He has researched / published widely on sexual and reproductive health and rights, HIV and TB, with a particular focus on understanding the socio-structural determinants of health and social inequities. He has published two edited collections on community-led approaches in research, design, monitoring and evaluation: ‘Peer research in health and social development: international perspectives on participatory research’ (2021); ‘Monitoring and evaluation in health and social development: interpretive and ethnographic perspectives’ (2016). He is working on a third collection called, ‘Lived Experience: Critical Perspectives in a Changing World’.

He is Commissioner, Lancet Global Health Commission on People-Centred Care for Universal Health Coverage, Member, International Editorial Board at Culture, Health & Sexuality; and Associate Editor, The Journal of Community Systems for Health. He has served as a Senior Advisor to BCG, and worked in senior research and consultancy roles with international governments, NGOs, UNAIDS, UNFPA and WHO. He holds honorary professorial appointments at Harvard Medical School, The University of Melbourne, Monash University, Deakin University and UNSW Sydney.