National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) academic Professor Kate Dolan has taken out the University of NSW's highest public health award.
Professor Dolan was awarded the 2010 Peter Baume Public Health Impact Prize for her 'significant international impact and career achievement in public health'.
Speaking at the award ceremony, Professor Dolan highlighted her recent project work in Iran, particularly her establishment in 2007 of a community drug clinic for women. The clinic has grown to treat 100 women a day, providing former prisoners and injecting drug users with treatment and services including methadone maintenance, hepatitis C testing and legal aid.
“I thought prison work was hard, but working in a developing country was extra hard,” Professor Dolan said of the experience.
Professor Dolan has spent over two decades in drug and alcohol research. Her key research interests include drug treatment and the prevention of blood borne viral infections in prisons; drug injecting and drug treatment in developing countries; and needle and syringe programs, methadone treatment and injecting rooms.
Her work has been published widely in journals including Addiction, Drug and Alcohol Review, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, The International Journal on Drug Policy, Drug and Alcohol Dependence and the European Journal of Epidemiology.
This is the second consecutive year that the Peter Baume Public Health Impact Prize has been awarded to an NDARC academic. Professor Louisa Degenhardt, who has since moved to the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, took out the honour last year.
This year's presentation was made at the close of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine's third annual Research Symposium. Professor Dolan was presented with her prize by Associate Dean of Research, Professor Denis Wakefield.
