Alex Macmillan

Alex Macmillan is a public health physician and Professor of Environmental Health in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine at the University of Otago Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her research focuses on the links between urban environments, environmental sustainability and health equity. 

Alex's main interests are in translating evidence about sustainability and health into policy by bringing together mātauranga Māori with policy, community and cross-disciplinary academic knowledge to come to shared understandings of complex systems, and then modelling future policy options. She has worked across a range of urban systems including transport, urban planning and housing. 

Alex is also involved in community based epidemiological research to understand the impacts of intervening to change urban environments, including to make it safer and easier to walk, bike and wheel. 

She is an honorary senior research associate at the Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering within The Bartlett, University College London’s global faculty of the built environment. She co-directs Climate Health Aotearoa (with Rhys Jones, Ngāti Kahungunu, Te Kupenga Hauora Māori, Waipapa Taumata Rau), Aotearoa’s national climate change and health research centre.

Recent research projects

Recent talk

Alex spoke recently for He Kauapapa Hononga, Otago’s climate change research network:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY8Z5vKXvgg

Key publications

  1. Hosking, J. Mackie, H. van der Werf, B. Field, A. Smith, M. Woodward, A.
    Effects of Te Ara Mua – Future Streets suburban street retrofit on traffic speed and volume: controlled before-after study.
    Journal of Transport and Health,
    30, 101601.
  2. Cresswell Riol, K. Wild, K.
    Stuck with the car and all its harms? A public health approach to the political economy of the status quo.
    Active Travel Studies,
    1(1).
  3. Raerino, K. Field, A. Hoskins, R.
    Local-Indigenous Autonomy and Community Streetscape Enhancement: Learnings from Māori and Te Ara Mua—Future Streets Project.
    International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
    18(3):865
  4. Davies, M. Shrubsole, C. Luxford, N. May, N. Chiu, L.F. Trutnevyte, E. Bobrova, Y. Zaid, C.
    Integrated decision-making about housing, energy and wellbeing: a qualitative system dynamics model.
    Environmental Health,
    15(1), 23-34.
  5. Smith, M. Woodward, A. Hosking, J. Wild, K. Field, A.
    Suburb-level changes for active transport to meet the SDGs: Causal theory and a New Zealand case study.
    Science of The Total Environment,
    714, 136678.