Rate My Professor Rebbecca Lilley

Dr. Rebbecca Lilley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Public Health, within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Otago. She earned her PhD in Public Health and Epidemiology from the University of Otago in 2007, along with an MPH, BSc (Hons), and DPH. Lilley joined the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine as a researcher in 1999, served as Senior Research Fellow from 1999 to 2022, held a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Monash University Accident Research Centre from 2007 to 2008, acted as Lecturer in Environmental Health at Otago from 2012 to 2013, and has been Senior Lecturer since 2022. Her career emphasizes advancing knowledge in injury-related public health challenges through rigorous epidemiological research.

Lilley's research programme investigates current and emerging issues in injury prevention and control, including surveillance and epidemiology of injuries, evaluation of injury prevention and compensation policies and programmes, and utilization of administrative data such as ambulance, hospitalisation, and compensation records for population-based health studies. Her interests span public health, injury epidemiology, injury prevention, and safety control. She teaches public health in the University of Otago's undergraduate health sciences programme and Master of Public Health programme, convenes PUBH303 Public and Global Health: Current Issues, and co-directs Postgraduate Research in Preventive and Social Medicine. Lilley supervises Master's and PhD students on diverse topics in injury and disability prevention using quantitative and qualitative methods. She serves on the executive committee of the Australasian Injury Prevention Network, as an Associate Investigator for the Te Hirangi Rū Quake CoRE programme, and as a research member on the Australian and New Zealand Hip Fracture Registry and Fragility Fracture Registry New Zealand Implementation Management Committees. Key publications include 'Factors predicting work status 3 months after injury' (2012), 'The relationship between fatigue-related factors and work-related injury/ill health among intensive agriculture workers in New Zealand' (2012), 'Societal burden of work on injury deaths in New Zealand, 2005–14: An observational study' (2023), 'Opportunities to prevent fatalities due to injury: a cross-sectional comparison of prehospital and in-hospital fatal injury deaths in New Zealand' (2021), and 'Māori work-related fatal injury in Aotearoa-New Zealand, 2005-2014: A decade of continued inequities for Indigenous Māori' (2025). She leads a Health Research Council-funded project evaluating a national falls prevention pathway referred by emergency medical services. Her scholarship is evidenced by over 1,400 citations on Google Scholar.