Nicole Black

Nicole Black (née Au) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics. Her main research is in the economics of health and child development. She is currently funded by an Australian National Preventive Health Agency Research Fellowship to investigate the economic consequences of childhood and adolescent obesity over the life-course. Her research has contributed to understanding the causal relationship between childhood obesity and human capital development (including academic achievement and socio-emotional skill development). She has demonstrated that the prevention of childhood obesity is likely to have substantial economic benefits over a child’s life-course, over and above those related to health. Nicole received her PhD in Health Economics from Monash University in 2012. She was awarded the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research by an Early Career Researcher in 2016.

In 2017 she was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) to investigate children's time investments, cognitive development and health.

Nicole's research interests also include the economics of obesity, inequalities in health, behavioural economic interventions for health promotion, measurement issues in health and wellbeing, and the efficiency of health service delivery in low income countries.