Rate My Professor Frederieke Petrovic-van der Deen

Dr. Frederieke Petrovic-van der Deen is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago, Wellington, within the Faculty of Medicine. She holds a BSc and an MSc in Health Sciences from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and completed her PhD in 2017 as part of the BODE3 programme, investigating the future smoking prevalence, population health, and cost impacts of novel tobacco control policies, known as 'tobacco endgame strategies,' for Māori and non-Māori in New Zealand. During her second year of the MSc programme, she worked with the Health Inequalities Research Programme, utilizing SoFIE data to examine the relationship between smoking behaviours and mental health. Her academic career at the University of Otago has focused on leveraging the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) to address health inequalities, particularly ethnic disparities affecting Māori populations.

Petrovic-van der Deen's research specializations include mental health, gastric cancer, tobacco control policies, ethnic disparities in cancer survival such as lung and gastric cancer, utilization of specialist mental health and addiction services, Indigenous Māori experiences of primary care following release from prisons, and the undercounting of Indigenous Māori in the carceral state. She is a member of the Māori Indigenous Health Institute, EleMent, and the Big Data Research Group. Key publications include 'Gastric cancer survival (in)equity from 2002 to 2021: Examining demographic and clinical characteristics among Māori and non-Māori' (New Zealand Medical Journal, 2026), 'Measuring ethnic disparities in lung cancer: The role of population and data sources' (International Journal for Equity in Health, 2025), 'Utilisation of specialist mental health and addiction services in New Zealand: A comparative analysis of refugees with the general population' (BMC Health Services Research, 2025), 'Health in justice or health injustice? Indigenous Māori experiences of primary care following release from New Zealand prisons: A national record study' (Social Science & Medicine, 2025), and 'The undercounting of Indigenous Māori imprisoned by the New Zealand carceral state: A national record study' (Health & Justice, 2025). Her work contributes significantly to understanding and mitigating health inequities in New Zealand.