Dr Emily Atkins

Dr Emily Atkins is a National Heart Foundation Australia postdoctoral research fellow, Research Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health, Conjoint Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney, Honorary Research Fellow at  Westmead Clinical School, University of Sydney, and a 2017 World Heart Federation Emerging Leader. She completed her PhD at the University of Western Australia using linked administrative hospital morbidity, deaths, and pharmacy data to investigate the cost-effectiveness of cardiovascular medicines for secondary prevention of atherothrombotic disease.

Dr Atkins is focussed on better use of proven medicines, particularly blood pressure lowering. Her current interest is cardiovascular medicines use in high- and low-resource settings, and equity in access to cardiovascular medicines. She is working on a number of studies investigating different methods to improve efficacy and use of blood pressure lowering therapy. Dr Atkins has clinical trials experience, working as a research fellow on the QUARTET trial, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council. She is analysing nationwide data on blood pressure, seasonality, and treatment patterns for an estimated 2 million people from MedicineInsight. She received a National Heart Foundation Vanguard Grant to study Dose Administration Aids for delivering combination therapy.

Dr Atkins is on the Executive Team and Scientific Advisory Committee of the Australian and New Zealand Alliance for Cardiovascular Trials, a member of the Australian Clinical Trial Alliance reference group for innovative Trial Design and Conduct. She currently supervises three PhD students with a fourth beginning in 2020, including three recipients of the prestigious Scientia Scholarship at UNSW Sydney.