Rate My Professor Ellie Johnson

Ellie Johnson is a Research Fellow in the Department of Public Health, Wellington, at the University of Otago, within the Health Sciences Division. She holds a BSc in Statistics and Microbiology and a Master of Applied Statistics from Massey University, completed in 2019 with a focus on outbreak detection of campylobacteriosis in Hawke’s Bay. Currently pursuing a PhD in Public Health under the supervision of Professor Nevil Pierse and Dr. Elinor Chisholm, her doctoral research evaluates the Healthy Homes Initiative using the Integrated Data Infrastructure to explore health and education outcomes. Johnson serves as a Research Fellow affiliated with the ITC project and works across He Kāinga Oranga, the housing and health research group, and ASPIRE 2025, which addresses tobacco control and smokefree policies. Her research interests encompass applied data analysis for public health questions, supporting advocacy through evidence on housing policy and tobacco endgame measures.

Johnson has co-authored numerous publications advancing public health research in New Zealand. Key works include 'Setting maximum occupancy limits in rental housing: Landlord control and tenant experience' (Housing Studies, 2025, with Bierre et al.), '“Freedom to move through the house”: How a healthy housing initiative improves quality of life in Aotearoa New Zealand' (Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 2024, with Chisholm et al.), 'Support for and likely impacts of endgame measures in the Smokefree Aotearoa Action Plan' (New Zealand Medical Journal, 2025, with Nip et al.), and 'A snapshot of a fragmented landscape: Homelessness law and policy in Aotearoa New Zealand' (book chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Global Perspectives on Homelessness, Law & Policy, 2024, with Fraser et al.). She contributed to Healthy Homes Initiative outcome evaluations, including the five-year report (Pierse et al., 2024) and three-year report (Pierse et al., 2022), as well as studies on support for Smokefree 2025 policies (Edwards et al., 2021). Johnson has presented at conferences such as the International Journal of Population Data Science and participated in the Falling Walls Lab Aotearoa New Zealand. She received the Graduate Women New Zealand PhD Fellowship for 2024-2025, served as Academic Officer for the Otago Postgraduate Association of Wellington, and was runner-up in the 2025 Three Minute Thesis Wellington heat.