Gary Sacks

Gary Sacks is a Senior Research Fellow at the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University. Gary’s research focuses on policies for the prevention of obesity and related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Gary’s current research centres on the influences on food policy and the role of the food industry. Gary’s research has been included as part of The Lancet Series on Obesity in 2011 and 2015, and the ACE-Prevention study, which examined the cost-effectiveness of over 100 interventions for disease prevention in Australia. Gary has also co-authored several reports for the WHO related to obesity prevention. Gary co-founded INFORMAS  - a global network that aims to monitor food environments. Gary completed his PhD in public health at Deakin University in 2011. His PhD thesis investigated policies for obesity prevention, including studies on the cost-effectiveness of junk-food taxes and traffic-light nutrition labelling. Gary has a broad range of international public health research and policy experience. This includes research placements at the World Health Organization (Switzerland), Harvard University (USA), the University of Oxford (UK), and the International Telecommunications Union (Switzerland). Prior to entering the field of public health, Gary worked as a management consultant, providing strategic business advice to multi-national corporations and State and Federal governments in Australia.