Elizabeth Elliott (paediatrician)


Elizabeth Jane Elliott is an Australian scientist. She is a member of the Order of Australia, for services to paediatrics and child health, as well as a fellow of the AAHMS, and the first female to win the James Cook Medal, awarded by the Royal Society of NSW for contributions to human welfare. She is a Distinguished professor of paediatrics at the University of Sydney and the Sydney Children’s Hospital, Westmead, and regarded as a "pioneer in fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, advocacy and patient care".
Elliott is the Founder and Director of the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit, which conducts research on rare childhood diseases, and she holds a Practitioner Research Fellowship from the NHMRC.

Early life

Elliott was raised in a family of medical practitioners, with a mother who worked with disabled children, a father who was an obstetrician, and a grandfather who set up resources for mobile medics. She worked in her first paediatric job at Blacktown Hospital and then worked in the UK in the 1980s. Elliott went to SCEGGS Darlinghurst for her high school education. She obtained her MPhil Public Health from the University of Sydney, Doctorate of medicine, and MBBS from University of Sydney. She obtained her FRCPCH from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, UK, FRCO from Royal College of Physicians, London, and RACP from Royal Australian College of Physicians.

Career

She has worked in paediatric health, as well as fetal alcohol syndrome. In addition, Elliott visited Christmas Island with a team of medical professionals to determine the health of children, who were asylum seekers and refugees in detention. Invited by Professor Gillian Triggs, the team interviewed over 200 children, including unaccompanied minors, and reported on their physical and mental health, including the presence of respiratory viruses, and instances of self-harm among parents and children. This led to her publishing her findings for the Australian Human Rights Commission on the “health and well-being of children in immigration detention”.
She has worked on the health of indigenous populations in Western Australia, and Asia. She also is part of a team travelling to Vietnam to improve health outcomes, with a combination of research and clinical work. Elliott reported "the combination of research and clinical work keeps me grounded – nothing is more rewarding than seeing a severely ill child recover".

Awards, honours and recognition