Gary Sacks is Professor of Public Health Policy and Co-Director of the Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition (GLOBE) at Deakin University. He is a NMHRC Emerging Leadership Fellow (2022-2026) and Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow (2019-2023). Gary’s research focuses on policies for improving population diets and preventing obesity, including evaluation of government and corporate policies for improving the healthiness and environmental sustainability of the food supply.

Gary has co-authored several international reports on obesity prevention, including the Lancet Commission on Obesity, and several reports for the World Health Organization. Gary also led the first-ever studies to benchmark progress on obesity prevention by Australian governments and food companies.

Gary co-founded INFORMAS (International Network for Food and Obesity / non-communicable diseases Research, Monitoring and Action Support) - a global network (active in 60+ countries) for monitoring food environments. Gary leads the component of INFORMAS focused on monitoring the actions of food companies in relation to obesity prevention and population nutrition.

Gary has a broad range of international public health research and policy experience. This includes research placements at the World Health Organization (Switzerland), the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (Australia), Harvard University (USA), the University of Oxford (UK), and the International Telecommunications Union (Switzerland).

Gary has a PhD in Public Health from Deakin University. He also has tertiary qualifications in economics, information systems and health informatics.