Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney
NHMRC Principal Research Fellow · Founding Co-Director, Mental Wealth Initiative · Affiliate, Healthy Longevity Centre Global Faculty of Excellence, University of Zurich · Managing Director, CSART
Associate Professor Jo-An Occhipinti is an epidemiologist and systems scientist. Her research aims to reshape how governments set priorities, design policy, and direct investment toward the foundations that sustain population health and societal resilience. She is known internationally for her pioneering work on the macroeconomic method for estimating social production, the monetary value of the vast and largely unrecognised productive capacity that societies depend on but do not count. She advocates for its inclusion in the global System of National Accounts, so that this capacity can be monitored, governed, and strengthened to meet the challenges of our era.
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Released in Nature Medicine on World Brain Day, our new paper, “Governing the social production of care: the hidden foundation of health systems,” sets out how governments can measure, govern and protect the invisible productive capacity on which health systems depend.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti joins the Nature Medicine Commission on Brain Health for Economic Resilience as a commissioner.
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At the UN General Assembly Science Summit, Associate Professor Occhipinti speaks on brain capital as a foundation for economic and social production and national prosperity.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti shares reflections from science and policy discussions in Paris and Brussels on shared EU–AU challenges & synergies for working on systemic solutions.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti shares highlights from a European scientific tour across Swiss cities, representing the University of Sydney Mental Wealth Initiative.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti, Dr Ante Prodan, and Professor John Buchanan argue in The Guardian that addressing wealth concentration is an economic priority for productivity and wellbeing.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti introduces the Mental Wealth Initiative to a Swiss delegation visiting the University of Sydney.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti is awarded a 2.8 million dollar NHMRC Investigator Grant for the Generation Mental Wealth research program.
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The Value of Social Production in Norway, a report redefining national prosperity beyond GDP, is launched at Brain House during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The report was prepared by the University of Sydney's Mental Wealth Initiative and international partners.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti marks the close of UN General Assembly meetings on brain health and a global campaign to prioritise it in policy.
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At the UN General Assembly, Associate Professor Occhipinti delivers a keynote on social production, brain capital and the move toward wellbeing economies.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti speaks at the Anika Foundation event with Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock on economic policy and youth mental health.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti meets Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, who was in conversation with former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, hosted by The Australia Institute at the State Library of New South Wales.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti welcomes the World Health Assembly resolution on Economies for Health for All, to which her Mental Wealth work contributed.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti meets world renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato during her Mission Economy Tour to Sydney for discussions on transforming capitalism, fostering innovation & rebuilding the Mental Wealth of Nations.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti attends the SwissCham Australia Gala as a guest of the Swiss Ambassador, strengthening Swiss and Australian collaboration in science and innovation.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti contributes to making the case for the United Nations to prioritise brain capital building as a global policy focus.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti marks the fifth anniversary of CSART, a not-for-profit alliance advancing policy through systems modelling and simulation.
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Associate Professor Occhipinti attends key meetings in Geneva facilitated by the Swiss Embassy in Australia & the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the UN.
Read more on LinkedIn →Flagship work
Social production is the monetary value of the unpaid goods and services people produce that strengthen the social, environmental, and cultural fabric of communities and nations. What a nation measures shapes what it prioritises, yet this productive capacity sits outside GDP and largely outside the evidence base that shapes economic policy. Associate Professor Occhipinti led the development of a method to value it and bring it into the national accounts alongside GDP, so that it can be monitored, governed, and strengthened. Measuring it is also opening new streams of research into healthy longevity, social infrastructure, and the reform of economic evaluation. Social production may be the most consequential extension of macroeconomic measurement since GDP, with direct implications for how governments allocate resources and build systemic resilience.
Learn more →Youth mental health and suicide prevention
Understanding the social and economic determinants of youth mental health, the work that underpins the NHMRC Generation Mental Wealth program.
Explore this strand →Systems modelling and simulation
Two decades building systems models that guide health and social policy under uncertainty, from youth mental health to alcohol-related harm, chronic disease prevention, and health-system sustainability.
Explore this strand →Brain capital, healthy ageing, and longevity
Brain health, mental health, and biological ageing are shaped by the social conditions in which people live. Evidence on how social contribution supports cognitive function, slows decline, and sustains a long, healthy, contributing life.
Explore this strand →Generative AI, labour, and the economy
Research on how labour displacement from generative AI could move economies toward a socioeconomic tipping point, and what a stable transition would require.
Explore this strand →A global network
Associate Professor Occhipinti's work has benefited from collaboration with international research institutions, multilateral bodies, and policy organisations across four continents. These relationships have helped build the evidence, the methods, and the institutional pathways that move research evidence into policy.