Louise Signal

Louise Nadine Signal is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in researching public health policy and promotion, inequities in healthcare, and environmental determinants of health.

Academic career
Signal has a Bachelor of Arts from Massey University, and a Master of Social Science from the University of Waikato, which she completed in 1983. Her master's thesis was on the evaluation of a marae-based training programme for young people. Signal then completed a PhD titled The politics of the Ontario Premier's Council on Health Strategy: a case study in the new public health. at the University of Toronto in 1994. Signal then joined the faculty of the University of Otago, rising to full professor in 2018. As of 2024, she is the Director of the Health Promotion and Policy Research Unit at the University of Otago, Wellington, and also Head of the Department of Public Health.

Signal's public health research focuses on environmental determinants of health, health promotion and policy, and health inequities, especially in low-income communities. She has investigated inequities in cancer treatment for Māori, exposure of children to harmful advertising, obesity prevention, and led a project in New Zealand and Tonga using automated cameras to record children's lives. Alongside colleagues Janet Hoek, Richard Egan and Christina McKerchar, Signal is Co-Director of the Te Rōpū Rangahau ō Te Kāhui Matepukupuku: Cancer Society Research Collaboration, a five-year research initiative aiming to reduce both the incidence of cancer and its impact, and also to address systemic inequities.

Book

 * Louise Signal and Mihi Ratima (eds). Promoting Health in Aotearoa New Zealand. Otago University Press (2015) ISBN 9781877578823