Ivana Stankov

Ivana is a Senior Research Fellow applying systems thinking and simulation-based modelling to better understand complex public health issues and the potential effectiveness of policies on health behaviour and chronic disease outcomes. Situated in the Wardliparingga Aboriginal Health Equity Research Unit at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, she is working in collaboration with the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Healthy Housing to generate evidence and support policy planning and action focused on improving the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations through healthy housing.

She also works with the Urban Health Collaborative at Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health in the United States, where she co-leads the systems aim of the SALURBAL Project and the Systems Working Group which focuses on using systems approaches to gain insight into the dynamic relationships between urban environments, health and climate impacts in Latin American cities. Ivana is also working on a National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities funded project leveraging complex systems approaches to identify policy levers to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in diet and obesity in Philadelphia, USA.

More broadly, her research to date has applied complexity science and its associated approaches to explore the influence of urban environments, including alcohol retail and transportation access, on a range of health outcomes, including alcohol and marijuana use, intimate partner violence, depression and physical activity.