Professor Phillipa Hay

Professor Phillipa Hay MBCHB (1983), MD (1993), FRANZCP (1991) DPhil (1995) FAED (2013). Professor Hay is an academic Psychiatrist and clinician at Western Sydney University (Foundation Chair of Mental Health), Camden and Campbelltown Hospitals, and the Wesley (Ashfield) Day Hospital program. She has extensive expertise in in eating disorders and related mental health problems of young people since her doctoral studies investigating osteopenia (with Anne Hall at the Wellington Clinical School) and analytic epidemiological studies (with Christopher Fairburn and the Oxford risk factor studies). She has conducted notable randomised controlled trials in psychological treatments for eating disorders. These include studies of CBT guided self-help, specialised approaches in anorexia nervosa, and cognitive remediation therapy. She has a unique body of work from cross-sectional surveys since 1995 reporting the point prevalence of eating disorders and their burden in the Australian general population, the only representative population data on eating disorders features in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as the increase in these problems. She has also lead the WEHL longitudinal cohort of women and eating problems and been an investigator in numerous other epidemiological studies.   To date she has over 260 peer reviewed scientific publications and her studies have provided key information to guide jurisdictions in planning health care services for eating disorders across Australia. In 2015 she received the Lifetime Leadership Award from the ANZ Academy for Eating Disorders and in 2013 she was elected Fellow of the (international) Academy for Eating Disorders. In 2014 she was awarded a “Science Without Borders” Visiting Professorship from the CAPES research foundation in Brazil. Her work has been funded by NHMRC, ARC and Rotary Health.