Professor Hal Kendig

Since 2005 Professor Kendig has served as National Convenor of the ARC/NHMRC Research Network in Ageing Well see site and Research Professor of Ageing and Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. He leads the Faculty’s Ageing, Health, and Services research team and he served as Dean from 1998 to 2005. In the 1990s he directed the ARC Key Centre in Gerontology and he held a Personal Chair in Public Health at La Trobe University. Earlier appointments in the ANU Research School of Social Sciences were in the Urban Research Unit, the Ageing and the Family Project, and the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health.
Professor Kendig is a gerontologist and sociologist who has strong interests in longitudinal research on ageing, health behaviours and the life course, and cross national research on ageing. He is currently analysing health risking and health promoting behaviours, and the influence of family, social class, and life transitions (notably retirement) on health outcomes in middle and later life. His second major research interest concerns housing and aged care services, in particular, ‘trajectories’ of health and care service use as people experience changes in their health and social support through later life. His research aims to take account of the views of older people themselves and the influence of public policies and social change.
Professor Kendig serves as co-director of the ongoing Melbourne Longitudinal Surveys of Healthy Ageing (MELSHA) that has been funded by the NHMRC, VicHealth, and the ARC since 1992. He has recently completed the VicHealth-funded Healthy Retirement Project (with La Trobe colleagues) and the Intergenerational Sustainability of the Australian Housing system project (with colleagues at the Universities of Sydney and Canberra). His current research includes an ARC Discovery grant on spatial opportunity and disadvantage led by NATSEM at the University of Canberra. Professor Kendig leads the ARC-funded Ageing Baby Boomers in Australia research project being conducted in collaboration with National Seniors Association, the US AARP, and La Trobe and Melbourne Universities.

He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia and Honorary Life Fellow of the Australian Council on the Ageing and National Seniors Association. He is a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Epidemiology Association and a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. He served on the Prime Minister’s PMSEIC Committee on Healthy Ageing (2003) and other government and international committees concerning research development, healthy ageing, and aged care. He served on the UN Research Agenda on Ageing project (just completed in 2008). He serves on the International Advisory Board of Ageing and Society and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Population Ageing. He serves on NSW Health’s Chronic, Aged, and Community Health Task Force. In 2003 he was awarded the Centenary Medal for ‘outstanding service to aged care and healthy ageing research through social science. He is participating in the ‘Long-term National Health Strategy’ stream at the Australia 2020 Summit.

Professor Kendig is recognised internationally for more than 170 publications on health, social, and policy aspects of ageing. His Who Should Care for the Elderly? (Singapore University Press, 2000), edited with William Liu, was awarded the Outstanding Book Award by the Australasian Journal on Ageing. With Stephen Duckett he wrote Australian Directions in Aged Care (Australian Health Policy Institute, 2001). In 2001 he co-authored A Review of Healthy Ageing Research commissioned by the Australian Community Services Ministers Advisory Council.

In recent years he has presented keynote addresses and invited plenary symposia to the National Ageing Research Conference in Australia, Financial Review conferences on ageing and housing, Aged and Community Services Australia, the Ageing Research in New Zealand Conference, and International Association of Gerontology Congresses in Rio de Janeiro and Beijing.