Professor Peter McIntyre receives Order of Australia (AO)

Congratulations to Professor Peter McIntyre, former NCIRS Director, who was named an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the 2020 Australia Day honours for his service to public health and medicine in Australia and overseas. 

Due to COVID-19 public health restrictions, Professor McIntyre was awarded his medal in a ceremony at New South Wales Government House in October 2022.

Peter McIntyre is Professor in the Discipline of Child and Adolescent Health and the School of Public Health, The University of Sydney, Australia and Professor in the Department of Women’s  and Children’s Health, University of Otago, New Zealand. He is qualified as a paediatrician, specialising in infectious diseases; an epidemiologist, specialising in vaccine-preventable diseases; and a public health physician.

He was the director of NCIRS during a period of unprecedented growth from 2005 to 2017 and continues to be a Professorial Fellow after moving with his family to New Zealand in 2018.

Professor McIntyre has made significant contributions to immunisation at the government level through the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), the Communicable Disease Network of Australia (CDNA) and the National Immunisation Committee (NIC). He received the National Immunisation Achievement Award from the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) in 2018. In research, he has supervised more than 10 PhD students to completion and has achieved international recognition, especially in the area of prevention of pertussis and pneumococcal diseases through vaccines, with a total of more than 400 publications. In teaching, he established the vaccine preventable disease unit in The University of Sydney Master of Public Health in 2001, and has supervised multiple trainees in the Master of Applied Epidemiology and Faculty of Public Health Medicine programs. 

Internationally, Peter was selected as a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization in 2019, having been a member of the Immunisation and Vaccines Implementation Research Advisory Committee (IVIR-AC) for 5 years (2012-17). He was also appointed to the International Vaccines Task Force by the World Bank, which reported to the World Health Assembly in 2018.

Congratulations to Peter for this well-deserved recognition for service to public health and medicine in Australia and internationally, and the positive impact his contribution has had on the health of people across all ages.