Professor Rachelle Buchbinder AO

Winner of the David de Kretser Medal

Rachelle Buchbinder is a rheumatologist and clinical epidemiologist, an NHMRC Investigator Fellow and Head, Musculoskeletal Health Unit and Wiser Health Care Group, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University. She is known internationally as a vocal proponent of evidence-based medicine and for her landmark studies, particularly those examining treatments accepted into practice before their proper evaluation.

She is the Coordinating Editor of Cochrane Musculoskeletal, Back and Neck, co-founded and leads the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence for the Australia and New Zealand Musculoskeletal (ANZMUSC) Clinical Trials Network, and she co-founded Wiser Healthcare, a national collaboration that aims to reduce overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Her best-selling 2021 book, 'Hippocrasy, how doctors are betraying their oath', written with orthopaedic surgeon Ian Harris, aimed to highlight society’s overreliance on medicine for a general audience.

She is a Fellow of both the Australian Academy of Health & Medical Sciences (AAHMS)(2015-) and Australian Academy Science (2024-) and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for contributions to rheumatology and epidemiology in 2020. Among numerous awards include AAHMS Outstanding Female Researcher 2023, Royal Society of Victoria 2022 Medal for Excellence in Scientific Research, the Australian Rheumatology Association Inaugural Senior Researcher Award 2023 and Cochrane’s Anne Anderson Award 2024.