Rate My Professor Richard Heller

Richard Heller is Emeritus Professor in the College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where he previously served as Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Community Medicine and Director of the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics until 2000. He also acted as consultant general physician at John Hunter Hospital during that period. Holding a medical degree and doctorate from the University of London, he later became Professor of Public Health at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, until his retirement in 2006, and holds emeritus status there as well. Throughout his career, Heller has demonstrated leadership in global health education, including a key role in the International Clinical Epidemiology Network, originally funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, to build capacity in medical schools across developing countries. He pioneered distance learning master's courses in public health at the University of Newcastle and developed a fully online MPH program at the University of Manchester.

Heller's research specializations encompass the causes and prevention of heart disease, implementation of evidence-based practice, and devising measures to assess the population-level impact of disease risks and interventions. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers and authored books on clinical epidemiology and medical statistics, including the influential 'The Distributed University for Sustainable Higher Education' (Springer, 2021), which advocates for innovative models in higher education delivery. In recent years, his academic interests have extended to higher education reform, open access publishing, and sustainable educational practices, particularly through initiatives like Peoples-uni and Peoples-Praxis, focusing on low-cost online public health capacity building in low- and middle-income countries using open educational resources. As a trustee of Peoples-Praxis, he continues to contribute to efforts in planetary health, medical ethics, and evidence-based medicine.