Rate My Professor Louise Signal

Professor Louise Signal is a Professor in the Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Otago, Wellington, where she has been a member for over 20 years. She holds a PhD in Community Health from the University of Toronto and a Diploma in Community Psychology. Prior to academia, she worked in central and local government roles focused on health promotion and community development. Promoted to full Professor effective 1 February 2018, she serves as Director of the Health Promotion and Policy Research Unit and Director of the Health Impact Assessment Research Unit. She is also Co-Director of Te Rōpū Rangahau ō Te Kāhui Matepukupuku, the Cancer Society Research Collaboration, and Regional Director for the South West Pacific Region of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education. With over 30 years in health promotion as a researcher, practitioner, and teacher, Professor Signal teaches courses including PUBH713 Society, Health & Health Promotion and PUBH744 Healthy Public Policy.

Her research centers on environmental determinants of health, emphasizing equity for Māori, Pacific, and low-income communities. Core areas encompass the politics of health and health equity, obesity prevention, and addressing harms from alcohol and sun exposure. She utilizes qualitative methods, policy research, and mixed-method designs. As principal investigator, she led the Kids'Cam project, employing wearable automated cameras to capture children's everyday environments in New Zealand and Tonga, highlighting exposures to unhealthy food, alcohol, and gambling marketing. Additional projects investigate food environments in low-income neighborhoods and children's real-time online exposure to food marketing. Key publications include 'Piecing together piecemeal regulation: Stakeholder insights into joint statutory regulation to reduce children's unhealthy commodity marketing exposure in Aotearoa New Zealand' (2026, Health Promotion Journal of Australia), 'Real-time recording: A scoping review of methods to study children's real-time exposure to food and food marketing online' (2026, Appetite), 'Health promotion in the Asia Pacific: Celebrating success stories and tackling challenges' (2025, Health Promotion Journal of Australia), and contributions to reports on healthier futures for Aotearoa. Her work informs public health policy on commercial determinants of inequities.