Alison Hayes is Associate Professor in health economics at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. She teaches health economic evaluation in the Masters of Public Health Program and conducts a program of research in economic modelling of chronic disease prevention. Her work takes a life-course approach to projecting the consequences of chronic disease, with a strong emphasis on modelling the epidemiology of disease and its associated long-term costs and quality of life outcomes. She has published widely on health-related quality of life in chronic disease and is passionate about using models as translational tools to bridge the gap between cost-effectiveness evidence and policy decisions in public health.

Alison has played a role in community engagement and involvement. She provided evidence to the inquiry by the NSW Standing Committee on Social Issues into childhood overweight and obesity (2016) and contributed to a submission to the Australian Senate Committee’s Inquiry into the Obesity Epidemic (2018). She is convenor of a special interest group on the Economics of Obesity within the International Health Economics Association and is providing a response to the draft of the National Obesity prevention strategy ( 2021). Her publications on the healthcare costs of obesity among under-fives and on projections of adult obesity by 2025 have been widely reported in the print and TV media.