Boyd Swinburn wins Critic and Conscience Award

The University's Professor Boyd Swinburn is the 2025 winner of the Critic and Conscience of Society Award for his research and public advocacy aimed at preventing the harm caused by unhealthy food, alcohol, and tobacco.  

Swinburn, a professor of population nutrition and global health in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, trained as an endocrinologist before moving into public health. His research into obesity led to his coining the phrase 'the obesogenic food environment'.

The award, which includes $50,000 for research-related activities, is a great honour, he says, for him personally, but more importantly for Health Coalition Aotearoa (HCA), which he established.

"The value of having a platform like HCA for academics to contribute to, as part of their critic and conscience role, was recognised within this award. HCA lowers the threshold for multiple voices of science and evidence to be heard, because it is a collective endeavour. This is far more powerful way to get the messages out there than just having the same old guy with his head above the parapet delivering those messages. 

"Academics make up the majority of HCA’s Expert Panels on tobacco, alcohol, unhealthy food and public health infrastructure. They contribute their knowledge, expertise and voice to policy issues and HCA helps to elevate that voice to decisionmakers. 

"I am really pleased that HCA has created this strong working relationship between universities and the 75 health organisations which are members of HCA – we are all now pushing collectively for the policies that we know will greatly improve the health of New Zealanders."

HCA has three major campaigns under way:

• 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. 

“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 is honorary professor of the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University.

He 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.

Swinburn 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. 

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.