Rate My Professor Erica Breuer

Dr. Erica Breuer is an Honorary Lecturer in the School of Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Health and Medicine, at the University of Newcastle, Australia. A global health researcher, she focuses on the development and evaluation of mental health services in low- and middle-income countries and the participatory development of theories of change for health and social care programs. Breuer earned her PhD in Psychiatry from the University of Cape Town in 2018, with doctoral research advancing mental health service development and evaluation in low- and middle-income settings. She also holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Cape Town (2009) and a Bachelor of Applied Science in Physiotherapy (Honours) from the University of Sydney. From 2008 to 2018, she worked with the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, conducting studies in South Africa, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Uganda, and Kenya. These included evaluations of measurement tools for mental illness, intervention studies on community-based mental health services, and epidemiological research. She contributed to the PRogramme for Improving Mental healthcaRe (PRIME) and from 2011 to 2018 developed, taught, and supervised the Master of Philosophy program in Public Mental Health.

Breuer joined the University of Newcastle in 2018 as a Conjoint Lecturer, advancing to Post-doctoral Research Fellow from March 2020 to September 2021 under Professor Liz Sullivan, where she researched women in contact with the justice system. Projects included a rapid review on parental challenges in prison commissioned by Corrective Services New South Wales, evaluation of the Keeping Us Together parenting program funded by the Department of Child Safety, Youth, and Women in Queensland, and a Delphi study on throughcare provision in Australia. She has facilitated theory of change workshops across 18 countries, including for the STRiDE project on dementia care in low- and middle-income countries led by Professor Martin Knapp, the PROMISE project on psychosis recovery in Malawi led by Professor Stephen Lawrie, and the EMPOWER project led by Professor Vikram Patel. Her highly cited publications encompass 'Social determinants of mental disorders and the Sustainable Development Goals: a systematic review of reviews' (The Lancet Psychiatry, 2018), 'Theory of change: a theory-driven approach to enhance the Medical Research Council's framework for complex interventions' (Trials, 2014), and 'Using theory of change to design and evaluate public health interventions: a systematic review' (Implementation Science, 2015). Recent works include studies on stigma reduction towards incarcerated populations (BMJ Public Health, 2025) and best-practice principles for post-custody transitions (PLoS ONE, 2025). Her fields of research are implementation science and evaluation (70%) and mental health services (30%).