Rate My Professor Philip Hill

Professor Philip Hill is the McAuley Professor of International Health and Co-Director of the Centre for International Health in the Division of Health Sciences at the University of Otago. He holds qualifications including Bachelor of Human Biology (BHB) and Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MB ChB), Master of Public Health (MPH), Doctor of Medicine (MD) in the epidemiology of tuberculosis in The Gambia, Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP), Fellow of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine (FAFPHM), Fellow of the New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine (FNZCPHM), and Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (FRSNZ). Following specialty training in New Zealand, he worked for six years as a clinical epidemiologist at the UK Medical Research Council unit in The Gambia on tuberculosis and pneumonia projects. In 2008, he was appointed the inaugural McAuley Professor of International Health, founded and now co-directs the Centre for International Health, and established the Otago International Health Research Network, later renamed the Otago Global Health Institute, one of the university's flagship research centres.

Professor Hill's research specializations encompass studies of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and disease, Streptococcus pneumoniae carriage, disease, and vaccination, within broader international health initiatives including tuberculosis and pneumonia projects across Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and the Pacific. He maintains major collaborations, such as with the TB-HIV research centre at the University of Padjadjaran in Bandung, Indonesia, transitioning from observational studies to intervention trials, and serves as Adjunct Professor at the Communicable Diseases Research Centre of Fiji National University, dedicating 20% of his time to capacity building. He has supervised over 30 masters and PhD students from low-resource settings, achieving high completion and publication rates. As lead or co-investigator, he has obtained grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UK Medical Research Council, European Commission, DFID, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, New Zealand Health Research Council, Marsden Fund, and others. Key publications include 'Global biological sample collections from tuberculosis studies: A scoping review' (2026, Lancet Microbe), 'The need for interconnected global biorepositories from tuberculosis studies to address fundamental questions at scale' (2025, Lancet Microbe), and 'Resurgence of rheumatic fever among Pacific peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand: A 2010-2023 analysis of hospitalisation data with implications for equity policy' (2025, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health). He has authored approximately 250 peer-reviewed articles, contributing significantly to global infectious disease research and training.