Rate My Professor Susan Heydon

Associate Professor Susan Heydon serves in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Otago, where her expertise lies in social pharmacy. She earned a BA(Hons), MA, PhD in History from the University of Otago in 2006, and holds a DHMSA. Throughout her career at Otago, she has progressed from lecturer to senior lecturer and now associate professor, contributing to teaching in areas such as topics in the pharmaceutical industry. Her research interests encompass social pharmacy, medicines and society in developed and developing countries, international health, implementation of aid programs, provision and use of health services, interactions between different medical systems, the historical, social, political, and economic contexts of sickness and healthcare, changing patterns of medicines use, the place of medicines in primary healthcare services in international and New Zealand contexts, medicines and migration, medicines in the context of people's lives, global vaccination programmes with a focus on smallpox in Nepal, medicines and pharmacy history in New Zealand, and a particular interest in Nepal and the Himalayan region.

Heydon has authored and co-authored significant works, including the book Implementing a global health programme: Smallpox and Nepal (Manchester University Press, 2025), which examines smallpox eradication efforts in Nepal, and Pharmacy at Otago: The First 50 Years (with Stephen Duffull, 2013), chronicling the history of pharmacy education at her institution. Her peer-reviewed publications address critical issues such as self-medication and medicine importation among Pakistani mothers in New Zealand ('Bringing Medicine from Pakistan and Self-Medication Among Pakistani Mothers in New Zealand', 2022, with Akhtar and Norris), older people's attitudes towards regular medicines (2013, with Bagge, Tordoff, Norris), health-seeking behaviors in Indonesia (2021), access to medicines in Nepal's Annapurna region (2019, with KC and Norris), and patterns of health services and medicine utilization by first-generation Pakistani immigrants in New Zealand (2025, with Mann et al.). Additional contributions include chapters on foreign medical encounters in Nepal (2024) and informal caregiving in Pakistan (2025, with Akhtar and Bukhari). Heydon has supervised doctoral theses on pharmacy provision, patient utilization, medicines in Nepal, military pharmacy, and forensic science portrayal. She has presented on collaboration in health programmes at the School of Pharmacy Research Symposium (2024). Her work informs understandings of medicine use in migrant communities, remote areas, and historical health interventions.