Professor Vanessa McDonald is co-director of the NHMRC CRE in Severe Asthma, Co-director and research leader in the Priority Research Centre for Healthy Lungs and an academic clinician in the Department of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine. She also leads the Chronic Disease and Older Person Research group within the School of Nursing and Midwifery.

Professor McDonald joined the University of Newcastle in 2011, following the completion of her PhD. Prior to this, she worked clinically within the Hunter New England Local Health District as a Respiratory Clinical Nurse Consultant. She has been a nurse for over 20 years and it is her clinical background and experience that drives her innovation in research.

Vanessa’s research program is centred around the development of innovative approaches to the management of chronic diseases. Her translational research program links biomedicine, clinical effectiveness and health policy development.

At 8 years post-doctoral, Prof Vanessa McDonald established a productive track record publishing over 110 peer reviewed journal articles. Her work is published in high impact journals including the Lancet, the AJRCCM, Thorax and the Eur Resp J. Complimenting her publication catalogue is a suite of other outputs. She has authored 10 book chapters, six separate national clinical practice guidelines for Asthma and COPD, national reports, multimedia resources, and national patient education publications.