Bill Bowtell is Adjunct Professor at the Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity, UNSW.
Bill a strategic policy adviser, with particular interest in national and international health policy structures and reform. He trained as a diplomat, with postings in Portugal, Papua New Guinea and Zimbabwe.
As senior adviser to the Australian health minister, Bill Bowtell played a significant role in the introduction of the Medicare health insurance system in 1984.
He was an architect of Australia’s successful and well-regarded response to HIV/AIDS.
Between 1994 and 1996, Bill Bowtell was senior political adviser to the Prime Minister of Australia. He maintains a close interest in the potential impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the other communicable diseases, on the social, economic and political development of the Asia-Pacific region.
Since 2005, Bill was Director of the HIV/AIDS Project at the Lowy Institute for International Policy and, since 2009, the Executive Director of Pacific Friends of the Global Fund. Pacific Friends is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In these positions, he has sought to increase knowledge and awareness of the challenges posed globally, and to the Pacific region, by the three diseases.
He has written and broadcast extensively on these subjects and participated in many international and Australian conferences and seminars especially in relation to HIV/AIDS.