Ruth Colagiuri, RN, CDE, BEd, is an associate professor in the School of Public Health and director of The Diabetes Unit at Menzies Centre for Health Policy (formerly the Australian Health Policy Institute) at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia.

Associate Professor Colagiuri moved to the University of Sydney in June 2005 to establish The Diabetes Unit—a focus for policies and strategies for improving diabetes prevention and care—and to establish an Oxford Health Alliance (OxHA) presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Prior to this, Associate Professor Colagiuri co-founded and directed the Australian Centre for Diabetes Strategies at the Prince of Wales Hospital, University of New South Wales (NSW). Previously, she managed the ambulatory care Diabetes Centre at the Prince of Wales Hospital and worked as a senior policy analyst in the NSW Health Department on diabetes as the prototype for a ‘health outcomes’ approach to chronic diseases.

With an increasing interest in environmental determinants of chronic disease and the link between their causes and the causes of global warming, in mid-2008 Associate Professor Colagiuri was appointed by the Faculty of Medicine to lead the Health Theme of the University of Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions.

Over the last 10 years, Associate Professor Colagiuri has worked extensively on international health having initiated and/or been involved in health policy and health service/system development policy and programmes and strategic plans for population health across 4 continents. She is a co-author of the (Australian) National Diabetes Strategy and Implementation Plan (1998) and author of the Plan of Action for the Western Pacific Diabetes Declaration (2000). She served on the steering committee for this initiative from 2000 to 2005 and subsequently authored the Diabetes Strategy for (sub-Saharan) Africa (2006). Associate Professor Colagiuri has conducted extensive health professional training in India and the Pacific Islands and has a strong track record of capacity building for health in Pacific Island countries—initially in Tonga and more recently in Nauru and Vanuatu—managing diabetes projects in up to 6 Pacific Island countries at a time. She has undertaken a number of consultancies for the World Health Organization, including a diabetes and hypertension plan for Mongolia, and for AusAID.

Associate Professor Colagiuri has been central to the development of evidence-based guidelines for diabetes in Australia and worked on the seminal NSW Health Diabetes Guidelines in the mid-1990s and beginning in 2000 led the development of and co-authored 6 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) endorsed guidelines and a guideline for the Management and Care of Diabetes in the Elderly. Since late 2007, she has led the development of an additional 4 NHMRC guidelines on behalf of the Diabetes Australia Guideline Development Consortium including a guideline on patient education. She has also published in the area of patient education including a Cochrane review of individual education, clinical diabetes care, and chronic disease issues and authored a number of seminal technical and policy reports including the development of an (Australian) National Consensus Position on Outcomes and Indicators for Diabetes Patient Education; reports on preventing diabetes both in the general population and for culturally and linguistically diverse groups; and psychosocial issues in diabetes. Other areas of research interest include involvement in diabetes risk factor and prevalence surveys (Tonga and Australia) and the cost of illness (Australia and Vanuatu). Associate Professor Colagiuri is a chief investigator on the NHMRC Serious and Continuing Illness Policy and Practice Study (SCIPPS).

Associate Professor Colagiuri was involved in the inception of OxHA. She leads the activities of the Asia-Pacific Centre and was instrumental in initiating the alliance’s Sydney Resolution and in designing and organizing the OxHA Sydney Summit, Building a Healthy Future: Chronic Disease and the Environment. She has a particular interest in working with industry and business to modify negative aspects of the food and physical activity environment.

Associate Professor Colagiuri also serves a number of local and international organizations on an honorary basis. She is a member of the Diabetes Expert Advisory Group of the Australian Department of Health and Ageing and chairs the International Diabetes Federation’s (IDF) global Task Force on National Diabetes Policy and Action. She is a member of the IDF-Western Pacific Regional Council. In the past, she served as chair of the Australian National Association of Diabetes Centres, vice president of Diabetes Australia, and vice president of the Australian Diabetes Educators Association (ADEA). In 2002 she was awarded life membership in ADEA for her contribution to diabetes.