Boyd Swinburn wins Critic and Conscience Award

Professor Boyd Swinburn from the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences is the 2025 winner of the Critic and Conscience of Society Award for his work educating and advocating for healthy food choices.

Sponsored by philanthropic trust the Gama Foundation, the annual award recognises an academic’s role under the Education and Training Act 2020 to act as the critic and conscience of society. It includes $50,000 for research and related work.

Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland's Swinburn has been selected as the 2025 recipient for his research and public advocacy about the harm caused by unhealthy food, alcohol, and tobacco.  

He is a professor of population nutrition and global health and honorary professor of the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University. He trained as an endocrinologist but is now a public health physician and conducts research on community and policy actions to prevent childhood and adolescent obesity, and reduce, what he refers to as the ‘obesogenic’ food environment.

Swinburn has long used his academic position to be a strong advocate for prevention policies to reduce the enormous harm caused by unhealthy food, tobacco and alcohol. 

"I established Health Coalition Aotearoa (HCA) to provide a platform that enables 60 health organisations and many committed individuals to speak publicly about population health issues that need addressing," Swinburn says.

“HCA has three major campaigns under way, which we will carry forward over the coming years – to reinstate the world-leading tobacco-control legislation that this government reversed, to establish a multipronged approach to improve public policy-making and reduce the undue influence of vested interest lobbying, and to restore and expand the free, healthy lunch programme, Ka Ora, Ka Ako,” says Swinburn who co-chairs HCA. 

“The focus of my research programme in Hawke's Bay, funded by the National Science Challenges, was conducting some of the evaluations which showed that Ka Ora, Ka Ako had many positive benefits; reducing hunger at school, improving nutritional health, improving school engagement, and building local economies.”

Swinburn leads an international network (INFORMAS) in over 60 countries to monitor and benchmark the healthiness of food environments and the implementation of food policies and actions to reduce obesity.

He established the World Health Organization's first Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention, at Deakin University in Melbourne and has also contributed to over 30 WHO consultations and reports on obesity.

Swinburn was previously co-chair of the International Obesity Taskforce and then World Obesity's Policy and Prevention section. He led two Lancet Series on Obesity and co-chaired the Lancet Commission on Obesity.