Rate My Professor Lisa Gold

Professor Lisa Gold is a Professor in the Faculty of Health at Deakin University, leading research in the economics of maternal and child health at Deakin Health Economics, within the School of Health and Social Development and Institute for Health Transformation. She is an economist with expertise in the economic evaluation of population health and social interventions to improve maternal, child, and adolescent health outcomes and reduce health inequalities. Gold holds an MA from the University of Cambridge, an MSc from the University of Oxford, and a PhD. Her career includes positions as Associate Professor and Theme Leader for Economics of Maternal and Child Health at Deakin University since 2007, and earlier as Lecturer, Research Officer, and PhD student at La Trobe University’s Mother and Child Health Research Centre from 2000 to 2009. She also serves as Honorary Research Fellow at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute since 2012.

Gold’s research focuses on key areas such as economics of antenatal care, low birth weight, disability and socioeconomic inequalities in maternal care, newborn hearing screening, ADHD and autism supports, severe pneumonia management, anxiety disorders, breastfeeding support, and interventions for child sexual exploitation or abuse. She leads a team of health economists at Deakin University, collaborating with academics and community partners across Australia, including through the Stronger Futures Centre of Research Excellence, to develop evidence for cost-effective and equitable strategies addressing trauma and violence. With over 230 publications and more than 11,000 citations on Google Scholar, her influential works include “Association between out-of-pocket health expenditures and low birth weight in Eastern Ethiopia: a generalized structural equation modeling (GSEM)” (2025), “Academic, behavioural and quality of life outcomes of children with slight to mild hearing loss: A population-based study” (2026), “Variations in severe maternal morbidity between women from refugee backgrounds and Australian-born women in public maternity care” (2025), “Economic Evaluation of Prevention Interventions for Child Sexual Exploitation or Child Sexual Abuse: A Systematic Review” (2025), and “The Long-Term Impact of ADHD on Children and Adolescents’ Health-Related Quality of Life” (2025). As Course Director for Deakin’s Master of Health Economics and Graduate Certificate of Health Economics, she leads the teaching program at Deakin Health Economics. In 2025, she received the AHED Discussant Prize for excellence as a discussant at the AHED workshop during the AHES conference. Her contributions provide critical economic insights to inform health policy and practice.