Ashleigh Stewart
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Background
Ashleigh has worked at Burnet Institute since 2017 and is a public health epidemiologist and post-doctoral research fellow. Ashleigh works across disease elimination and harm and risk reduction at the Burnet. Her research focuses on viral hepatitis elimination among people with HIV and drug-related harms among people who inject drugs. Ashleigh specialises in longitudinal data and linked administrative data analysis.
In 2022–2023, Ashleigh was appointed as a research fellow at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, working in collaboration with the UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions. Her work was related to monitoring and preventing deaths in custody.
Ashleigh completed her PhD at Burnet in 2022, where she explored mental health morbidity and service access among men leaving prison who reported a history of injecting drug use. Ashleigh also has a background in clinical nursing working as a registered nurse, specialising in mental health.
Key research interests include: infectious disease epidemiology, hepatitis C elimination, injecting drug use, drug-related harms, supervised injecting rooms, women’s health.
Qualifications
- 2022: PhD, Monash university, Melbourne, Australia
- 2016: Master of Public Health, University of Melbourne, Australia
- 2013: Bachelor of Nursing, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia
Appointments
- 2022: Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
- 2022: Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, Melbourne, Australia
Awards
- 2024: Harold Mitchell Foundation Postdoctoral Travel Fellowship
- 2022: Dora Lush Academic Excellence Award 2022
- 2022: International AIDS Conference, IAS/MSD Prize for Research in HIV Prevention: Annual prize
- 2021: Hon Geoffrey Connard Travel Fellowship
- 2020: Australasian Professionals Society on Alcohol and Other Drugs Webinar Series, Rapid Presentation People’s Choice Award.
- 2020: Burnet Institute Student Symposium, Best Poster Presentation Award
- 2020: Burnet Institute Student Symposium, People’s Choice Award
Burnet publications
View 27 moreLiver fibrosis regression in people living with HIV after successful treatment for hepatitis C
JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes
Jim Young et al
Supervised Injecting Room Cohort Study (SIRX): study protocol
BMJ Open
Ashleigh C. Stewart et al
Unsuccessful Direct Acting Antiviral Hepatitis C Treatment Among People With HIV : Findings From an International Cohort
Liver International
Brendan Harney et al
Current projects
View 1 more
How stable housing can support people who use drugs (HOUSED)
Australia is experiencing a housing crisis, and people who use drugs are being left behind. To address this, we're analysing the social, economic and health benefits of stable housing for people who use drugs.
International Collaboration on Hepatitis C Elimination in HIV Cohorts (InCHEHC)
This is a multinational longitudinal cohort of people living with HIV who are at risk of hepatitis C virus infection or infected with the hepatitis C virus.
Supervised Injecting Room Cohort study (SIRX)
A cohort study of people who inject drugs and who use the Melbourne Supervised Injecting Rooms.
