Prof Freya MacMillan is Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research, within the Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research, Enterprise and International) at Western Sydney University. She is also deputy director of the Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism Translational Research Unit (DOMTRU), an Executive member and lead of the prevention working group in the Maridulu Budyari Gumal Sydney Partnership for Health, Enterprise, Research & Education (SPHERE) Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism Theme, an Implementation Science Leader Panel Member in the SPHERE Implementation Science Platform and is an International Union for Health Promotion and Education registered Health Promotion Practitioner in Australia.

Freya is a health promotion intervention expert. She uses her community engagement, mixed-methods and implementation science expertise to develop, evaluate and translate health promotion and injury prevention interventions into sustainable practice for the prevention of diabetes, promotion of health and wellbeing and prevention of road injury/mortality. Dr MacMillan has strong expertise in combining qualitative and quantitative research methods to guide intervention development and for comprehensive and rigorous evaluation. Community engagement is at the core of her research. She co-creates programs with communities, healthcare workers and other professionals to develop innovative community-based and health service strategies. She has a particular focus on models incorporating peer support, that are more likely to be adopted and integrated long-term into practice for multi-cultural groups.

Current collaborative partners include Think of The Five - Arrive Alive, Box Divvy, Local Health Districts, Primary Health Networks, Diabetes Australia, Maridulu Budyari Gumal SPHERE and NSW Health. Her links within these networks and across DOMTRU, SPHERE and Western, provide multi-disciplinary collaborative opportunities.

As Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor Research at Western Syd U, Freya co-develops and implements strategies to increase research quality, performance and reputation.