Mick Drew

Dr Drew has dedicated his career to improving the health and performance of Australians. Dr Drew has a Bachelor of Physiotherapy (Honours), Master of Clinical Epidemiology, PhD in Physiotherapy Contribution), Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health, and a Fellow of the Australian Sports Medicine Federation. Dr Drew is an adjunct Associate Professor at University of Canberra and has supervised 16 PhD and 1 Masters Students across physiotherapy, infectious disease, health economics, nutrition, biomechanics, sport science, epidemiology and sports performance.

Dr Drew commenced as Assistant Secretary Health Protection and Policy in Joint Health Command on 23 January 2023. This branch supports ADF capability through health surveillance, research, policy and senior technical/medical advice aimed at preserving the force to maintain capability while optimising members’ health over their life-course.

He was previously the Director of Health Research within Joint Health Command from 2022-2023. Prior to that he worked at the Australian Institute of Sport for over a decade in various roles including Senior Sports Physiotherapist, research manager, team physiotherapist, which included many overseas competitions and leading an innovations program to improve Australian Olympians’ health and performance. Some key outcomes of this innovation program included demonstrably reducing injury rates and retraining a workforce to deliver performance-driven prevention and healthcare services. Prior to his AIS role, he worked in Private Practice in Newcastle and worked as a Physiotherapist and Data Analyst for the Newcastle Knights.

Since 2018 Dr Drew has worked with the University of Canberra to develop the Master of Applied Clinical Epidemiology (Sport) program which was a world first degree program to give practitioners the skillset to prevent health problems in high performance environments. Dr Drew has over 75 peer-reviewed publications and presented over 60 conference presentations including invited and keynote presentations.  In 2018, his team at the AIS received an Australia Day Award for their work in improving athlete health and in 2015 he received an Australian Sports Commission CEO Commendation for services to research and capability. Dr Drew is married to Lauren and together they have two young children.