Associate Professor Robert Carter

A/Professor Rob Carter is Deputy Director of the Program Evaluation Unit in the School of Population Health at The University of Melbourne and Head of its Health Economics Group (HEG). Previously, Rob was Deputy Director of the Monash University Health Economics Unit between 1993 and 1999. Prior to joining Monash University, Rob was Head of the Economics and Evaluation Unit at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (1990-1993).

Rob is widely recognised for his expertise in economic appraisal and was invited by the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, for example, to provide expert advice on priority setting to the 2002 meeting of Commonwealth Health Ministers. Rob has served on a range of government advisory committees and is currently the inaugural health economist member of the Pharmaceuticals Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC). He also sits on various Steering Committees and Advisory Committees, including the Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Unit at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the then National BreastScreen Advisory Committee. Rob has extensive experience in the field of screening, having been the coordinating health economist in SECU (the Screening Evaluations Coordination Unit), which coordinated the national evaluations of breast and cervical cancer screening in the early 1990's. He has been involved in a number of major government or NHMRC sponsored reports and has published widely in his field of expertise. In 2002 Rob was awarded an NHMRC Population Health Career Development Award to continue his work on the application of economic appraisal to population health.

Apart from his research interests and management responsibilities, Rob co-ordinates the teaching of health economics/economic evaluation at The University of Melbourne and is a member of the School of Population Health's Higher Research Degrees Committee and the Postgraduate Studies Committee. Rob also teaches within the Commonwealth's Corporate Studies Program and has assisted other universities with their teaching programs. During 1994 and 1995 he was Coordinator when the Monash University Distance Education Certificate in Health Economics was introduced. He has organised or assisted with a range of workshops and seminars for government, Divisions of General Practice, research organisations and a range of other groups interested in health economics.