| Associate Professor Tony LaMontagne |
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Principal Research Fellow |
| Biography |
A/Prof LaMontagne’s expertise is in occupational health, health promotion, and the intersection of the two. In the McCaughey Centre, most of his work falls under the theme area of “economic participation and security” as upstream determinants of mental health & community wellbeing. “Safe and decent work for fair pay is a fundamental human right and a pillar of civil society. Yet working conditions continue to be a major contributor to health inequalities in Australia and other countries,” he says. Hazardous working conditions, and associated disease and injury burdens, disproportionately affect those in less powerful positions in society: for examples, lower occupational status workers, women, and younger workers. “So we’re a far way from a “fair go” at healthy and sustainable work for all in Australia,” says LaMontagne. “In a society as small and prosperous as Australia, we could be a world leader in the pursuit of that goal, given the political will.”
A/Prof LaMontagne’s interest is in developing scientific and public understanding of work as a social determinant of health, and contributing to improvements in policy & practice aimed at protecting people from the harmful effects of work as well as optimising the health-promoting aspects. LaMontagne draws on his strong occupational health background, but integrates it with health promotion, sociological, historical, labour relations, and other perspectives. He collaborates widely and across multiple disciplines to advance understanding of the relationships between work and health, and to translate such knowledge into workplace health policy and practice.
This strongly multi-disciplinary approach has characterised his career, which has ranged across broad territory, both professionally and geographically. Tony’s diverse roles have included investigating the impact of oil spills in the Ecuadorian Amazon as a Health and Human Rights Investigator, lecturing in occupational health at the Harvard School of Public Health, and researching job stress at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Health & Society. At the McCaughey Centre, he anticipates drawing on the complementary expertise of colleagues to develop further multi-disciplinary dimensions to his work. His aim is to understand work and health in the broader societal context and relate it to other factors that affect people’s health.
Born in the US, Tony’s formal educational qualifications include degrees from Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts, and span botany, molecular toxicology and pharmacology, adult basic education, and occupational and environmental health. From his initial lab science base, he moved to the field to be closer to application and developed expertise in applied toxicology in occupational and environmental settings.
Tony’s route to the McCaughey Centre was guided by his wish to do science in the public’s interest. “I took the notions of democracy and the greater good to heart, and saw it as a guiding principle for my education and life’s work. I was influenced early on by the reflections of Einstein, Openheimer, and others who grappled with the meaning of responsibility in science, and how to enact that responsibility. Coupled with my love for science was the conflicted feeling that science had a lot to answer for as well as a lot to offer to society. This led me to the field of toxicology in the 1980’s, where questions of science, politics, and policy were being debated vigorously.” Such debates continue to be of central importance in translating the potential benefits of public health research to policy and practice today.
For more information including Tony’s qualifications, publications, research grants and classifications, visit Find an Expert.