Beyond survival: To what extent does Australian disaster and emergency management policy consider population health?
Join the Department of Global Health and Population for this Brown Bag Seminar featuring Claire Leppold, Takemi Fellow in International Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and senior research fellow at University of Melbourne, and Kate Brady, senior research fellow at University of New South Wales.
Speaker bios
Claire Leppold is a Takemi Fellow in International Health at Harvard Chan School and a senior research fellow at the Disaster, Climate & Adversity Unit, University of Melbourne. She is also an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow (2026–2029) and a Westpac Research Fellow (2026–2031). Claire’s research examines how to support communities in recovery from cascading and compounding disasters. This focus began during her time living and working in Fukushima following the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. In 2020, Claire moved to Australia to begin work at University of Melbourne, where she has since led studies on recovery from the 2019–20 bushfires and repeat floods, including the commissioned evaluation of the Australian Red Cross Bushfire Recovery Program (2020–2023). She has worked with state government, non-government organizations, and community groups to identify ways of changing from a “single disaster” focus in emergency management to one that addresses combined effects across multiple disasters. She has a particular interest in the social determinants of health in disaster settings.
Kate Brady has had a distinguished career in disaster recovery operations, programming, and research. Kate is the senior research fellow for the University of New South Wales HowWeSurvive initiative, an Honorary Academic Specialist at University of Melbourne, and technical advisor to Australian Red Cross Emergency Services, where she established and led the disaster recovery program for 12 years. Most of Kate’s work focuses on what people find helpful and unhelpful after disasters. Throughout her career, she has had significant influence on state and national emergency management policy and has an international profile in collective trauma, resilience, and disaster recovery programming and policy. Kate is co-author of the Australian Disaster Recovery framework and was an advisor in the development of the National Disaster Mental Health Framework. In 2021, she became the host for ABC’s podcast “After the Disaster” and gave a TEDx talk in 2025.
Speaker Information
Kate Brady
Organizers
ⓘ Harvard Chan School hosts a diverse array of speakers, invited to share both scholarly research and personal perspectives. They do not speak for the School, and hosting them does not imply endorsement of their views, organizations, or employers.