Dr Steven Allender is Professor of Public Health and Co- Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University. Steve holds a jointly funded National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)/ Australian Heart Foundation Career Development Fellow and is co-lead (CID) on an NHMRC Australian Centre for Research Excellence in Obesity Policy Research and Food Systems. Steve receives lead investigator funding from bodies including the US National Institutes of Health, National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Chronic Disease Prevention and Service Improvement Fund and the European Union. Steve holds a number of honorary appointments including: • Faculty of the Global NCD Prevention Short Course, University of Oxford, 2010- • Foundation Member World Heart Federation’s Global Working Group (WG) on Policy/Advocacy, 2011- • Consultant, Prevention, Health Policy and Epidemiology Section, European Association for Cardiac Prevention and Care 2010- • Honorary Membership Faculty of Public Health. Royal College of Physicians, United Kingdom, 2009 – Dr Allender previously held the post of Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Public Health at the University of Oxford (2002 -2012). In this post Steve was the lead researcher for the Coronary heart disease statistics project funded by the British Heart Foundation. Steve also holds an Honorary Membership of the Faculty of Public Health, UK Royal College of Physicians and was a founding fellow of the Unit for Bio Cultural Variation and Obesity at the University of Oxford. Steve has an ongoing programme of research on the burden of disease and obesity prevention. Recent work has seen a particular interest in the emerging burden of chronic disease in developed and developing countries and the possibilities for using complex systems approaches for community based intervention.