2025 Critic And Conscience Of Society Award Winner Advocates For Health Policy Action

For his work educating and advocating for healthy food choices, Professor Boyd Swinburn is the 2025 winner of the Critic and Conscience of Society Award.

Sponsored by the philanthropic trust The Gama Foundation, the annual award recognises an academic’s role under the Education and Training Act 2020 to act as the critic and conscience of society.

Professor Swinburn has been selected as this year’s recipient for his research and public advocacy about the harm caused by unhealthy food, alcohol, and tobacco.

Based at the University of Auckland, Professor Swinburn is Professor of Population Nutrition and Global Health and Honorary Professor of the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University. He trained as an endocrinologist but is now a public health physician and conducts research on community and policy actions to prevent childhood and adolescent obesity, and reduce, what he refers to as the ‘obesogenic’ food environment.

Professor Swinburn has long used his academic position to be a strong advocate for prevention policies to reduce the enormous harm caused by unhealthy food, tobacco and alcohol.

Professor Swinburn established Health Coalition Aotearoa (HCA) to provide a platform which enables 60 health organisations and many committed individuals to speak publicly about population health issues that need addressing.

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“HCA has three major campaigns under way, which we will carry forward over the coming years – to reinstate the world-leading tobacco-control legislation that this government reversed, to establish a multipronged approach to improve public policy-making and reduce the undue influence of vested interest lobbying, and to restore and expand the free, healthy lunch programme, Ka Ora, Ka Ako,” says Professor Swinburn who co-chairs HCA.

“The focus of my research programme in the Hawkes Bay, funded by the National Science Challenges, was conducting some of the evaluations which showed that Ka Ora, Ka Ako had many positive benefits; reducing hunger at school, improving nutritional health, improving school engagement, and building local economies.”

Professor Swinburn leads an international network (INFORMAS) in over 60 countries to monitor and benchmark the healthiness of food environments and the implementation of food policies and actions to reduce obesity. He established the World Health Organisation's first Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention, at Deakin University in Melbourne and has also contributed to over 30 WHO consultations and reports on obesity. He was previously Co-Chair of the International Obesity Taskforce and then World Obesity's Policy & Prevention section. He led two Lancet Series on Obesity and Co-Chaired the Lancet Commission on Obesity.

About the Award:

Established in 2017, the Critic and Conscience of Society Award encourages academics to provide expert commentary on important issues affecting the New Zealand community and future generations. Previous award winners include; Professor Robert Patman (2024), Dr Dean Knight (2023), Professor Janet Hoek (2022), Professor Alexander Gillespie and Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles (2021), Professor Michael Baker and Associate Professor Anita Gibbs (2020), Professor Andrew Geddis (2019), Professor Ann Brower (2018) and Dr Mike Joy (2017).

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