Who we are

Margot Parkes

Review Editor, EcoHealth Association Secretary
University Of British Columbia, Canada

Margot Parkes acted as Managing Editor for Ecohealth from its inception to mid-2007. She has also acted as project manager while EcoHealth journal and network have been established. Her interest in the links between public health, ecosystems and sustainability were founded while at medical school in New Zealand. After practising as a doctor in Auckland , New Zealand, she completed a Masters degree in Human Ecology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium. In 1997 she worked as an intern at the World Health Organization's Office for Global and Integrated Environmental Health in Geneva. She returned to New Zealand as a Health Research Council Training Fellow to complete her doctorate with the University of Otago. Her PhD research investigated the links between river catchment management, freshwater ecosystems, and public health in New Zealand's Taieri River catchment. Margot's research is ecosystem-based and community-oriented with a focus on the multi-stakeholder processes required to foster health and sustainability. Her interests encompass health, environment, and development with an especial concern for integrated and cross-sectoral approaches to improve determinants of health. In addition to peer-reviewed publications in ecosystem, environmental and public health journals, she co-authored a chapter on 'An Ecosystems Approach' in the Oxford University Press text Environmental Health in Australia and New Zealand' (2004).