The establishment of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH) resulted from a 1986 review of Australian public health teaching and research undertaken for the Australian government by Dr Kerr L White from the Rockefeller Foundation. That review also led to the founding of the Australian Institute of Health (now the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare) and the Commonwealth Department of Health’s Public Health Education and Research Program (PHERP), which provided significant funding for NCEPH until 2010. Kerr White’s vision for NCEPH is encapsulated in the following statement:

NCEPH’s Foundation Director, Bob Douglas, responded to the challenge with gusto. From the beginning, NCEPH’s research has been characterised by a multidisciplinary approach building on the original five disciplines of epidemiology, statistics, sociology, health economics and demography. It has tackled a wide-range of problems from Indigenous mortality to hospital financing to arsenic poisoning from groundwater in Bangladesh to obesity. In the 1990s the Centre achieved recognition and a degree of notoriety for recommending a trial of heroin prescription.

NCEPH’s first three Directors were:

	Bob Douglas 1988-2000
	Tony McMichael 2001-2007
	Niels Becker 2007 – 2011

Bob Douglas’ history of his years as Director reveals how NCEPH’s broad range of activities came into being. The crown jewel of his achievements was the establishment of the Master of Applied Epidemiology program, which provides the core of Australia’s capacity for infectious disease outbreak investigation. He also laid the foundations for future research at NCEPH and elsewhere of the social determinants of health. Tony McMichael continued the Centre’s engagement with complex policy-relevant problems, especially through his own work examining the effects of climate change on health. His pre-eminence in this area was recognized by the award of a prestigious Australia Fellowship in 2007, which also required him to step down from the Directorship. With the government’s decision to wind-up PHERP funding, Niels Becker guided the transition to ANU funding and promoted the establishment of the Institute of Population Health, within the ANU’s new College structure. Niels Becker also oversaw the consolidation of NCEPH’s research themes. After his retirement in July 2011, Professor Gabriele Bammer was appointed as Director.

NCEPH has always been a harmonious and friendly workplace, due in no small part to the efforts of the administrative staff, who have also always provided strong support for the Centre’s teaching and research. This brief overview cannot do justice to the many achievements of the staff and students over the years, but five snippets provide a glimpse. Jack Caldwell helped pioneer research on AIDS in Africa. Dorothy Broom undertook leading research on women’s health centres and strengthened examination of the gender dimension in population health. John Deeble staunchly defended Medicare and worked with other countries to introduce national health care systems. The late Aileen Plant solidified Australia’s communicable disease program, as well as its assistance in international outbreak investigations. David Legge helped revolutionise primary health care in Australia.