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Professor Wendy Hoy

Professor of Medicine

Royal Brisbane Clinical Unit
Faculty of Medicine
w.hoy@uq.edu.au
+61 7 334 64809

Overview

Professor Wendy Hoy is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Centre for Chronic Disease at the University of Queensland in Australia. She is recognised internationally for her multidisciplinary research and policy and program development in kidney and related chronic disease, particularly in high-risk populations. Her work has been recognised through the International Distinguished Medal of the National Kidney Foundation in the USA in 2008, the Australian Research Fellowship: National Health and Medical Research Council, 2008-2012, appointment as ”Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) by the Commonwealth of Australia in 2010 and election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) in 2015.

She graduated from Telopea Park High School in Canberra, with the top Leaving Certificate score among students (>27,000) in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. She graduated from Sydney University with BMedcSci in Immunology (HI) in 1967, and MB BS (H1) in 1969. She trained in Medicine and Nephrology in the USA and is board certified in Medicine and Nephrology in the USA and Australia.

She worked for 20 years in the USA, in academic and clinical nephrology, kidney transplantation, and clinical trials, and developed a very successful Clinical Trials Unit at the Lovelace Medical Foundation (LMF) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She pioneered the development and application of a clinical/epidemiologic database from adminstrative datasets of the affiliated Lovelace Medical Centre and Health Maintenance Organisation, which became embedded practice in all major heath care institutions. She was Deputy Medical Director of the Lovelace-based, CDC sponsored, clinical examination component of the Veterans’ Health Study of Agent Orange (Dioxin Toxicity), and was for several months the Medical Director of the clinical examination component of the study of instrustrial dioxin toxicity sponsored by NIOSH. Finally, she established the Native American Renal Disease Research Program through which her early studies of kidney and related chronic disease in American Indians were conducted.

She is recognised internationally for her multidisciplinary research into kidney and related chronic disease, particularly in high-risk populations. She was among the first to describe kidney disease, independent of diabetes, in Native Americans, in studies of Zuni, Rio Grande Pueblo, Navajo and Apache Indians in the Southwest of the USA. She promotes an integrated view of non-communicable chronic diseases, and interpretation of health profiles in multi-determinant frameworks. She was the first to demonstrate the contribution of low birthweight to kidney disease in Australia, manifest in remote living Australian Aborigines, and then drove demonstrations of birthweight’s effects on health profiles in mainstream Australians through the AUSDIAB study. She showed that screening and treatment of preterminal kidney disease in remote-living Australian Aboriginal reduces dialysis needs, deaths and costs; that work has helped transform Australian Aboriginal health services, and underpins many screening and treatment programs globally. She has tested the preventative potential of pharmacologic treatment with perindopril on new onset chronic disease in currently unaffected people, showing a possible protective effect in women. She described the transformation of mortality in remote-living Aborigines over the last 50 years, and the links to current health profiles and population size and structure. She and colleagues have conducted the only nationwide study of kidney biopsies in Australia, defining the high rates of enlargement and scarring of kidney filters. She, with Bertram and Hughson, have also defined, in a series of >450 autopsies, encompassing five ethnic groups in three continents, the range of nephron number and glomerular volume in normal kidneys, and the structural features marking heightened susceptibility to kidney disease and high blood pressure. The relationship of birthweight to nephron number was discovered in that work.

Current work includes investigations of low birthweight and prematurity as determinants of adult health, (DOHAD: Developmental Origins of Health and Disease); description of the genome and the genetic architecture of chronic disease in Tiwi Aboriginal people, APOL1-risk allele-associated disease in African-Americans, and links of chronic diseases to foetal alcohol exposure. She leads the longitudinal Tiwi Islands kidney project, now in its 28th year, tracking the ongoing epidemiologic transition and it expression in clinical profiles and mortality patterns. Nested therein is the ongoing longitudinal study of the Tiwi Birthweight Cohort, investigating DOHAD over the life course, with participants now up to 64 years of age. She collaborates in several research projects led by other investigators across Australia. She is a consultant with PAHO and Central American agencies in relation to chronic disease (CKD) of unknown aetiology in Central America and with the WHO and the CKDu Research Task Force in Sri Lanka. She co-leads the Safe Water Coalition, which is collaborating with other agencies to optimise provision of safe, potable water to underserved remote Australian Indigenous communities. She leads the CKD.QLD Collaborative (2011-ongoing), Australia’s only state-wide CKD surveillance program, and the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in CKD (2015-2020). CKD.QLD is a core member of the iNET-CKD, an international research collaborative of CKD cohorts based in the International Society of Nephrology.

Collaborations span at least 19 research areas, in more than 21 institutions and 17 countries/regions, which include several states in the USA, Canada, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, El Salvador, Cuba, Sri Lanka, India, Japan, Indonesia, New Caledonia and Micronesia. In Australia, Dr Hoy collaborates with Indigenous health services, federal and state/territory agencies, research institutions, the National Centre for Indigenous Genomics, private enterprise, businesses, pharma, biotecnical companies, Kidney Health Australia, the Heart Foundation, and philanthropy, most especially the Colonial Foundation of Australia.

Dr Hoy has been a member of the Expert Advisory Group to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Australia’s primary health surveillance agency, on Chronic Kidney Disease, the Vascular Disease Surveillance group and the Chronic Disease Advisory Group almost continuously since 2007. She is on the AIHW’s Indigenous Burden of Disease Advisory Group, and is an Advisor to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (in survey deisgn). She is a consultant with PAHO and Central American agencies in relation to chronic disease of unknown aetiology (CKDu) in Central America and with WHO and the CKDu Research Task Force in Sri Lanka. She co-leads the Safe Water Coalition, which collaborates with other agencies to optimise provision of safe, potable water to underserved remote Australian Indigenous communities. She leads the CKD.QLD Collaborative (2011-ongoing), which is Australia’s only state-wide CKD surveillance program, and the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in CKD (2015-2020). CKD.QLD is a core member of the iNET-CKD, an international research collaborative of CKD cohorts based in the International Society of Nephrology.

Funding totals $AU62M, which includes $AU40M for projects in which Hoy has been CIA. Funders have included the Flinn Foundation in Arizona, the Arizona Kidney Foundation, Kidney Services in Jackson Miss, the American Heart Foundation, Hoechst Roussel, Janssen Cilag, Squibb, Sandoz, the NIH/NIDDK, the CDC and NIOSH. In Australia, funders have included the NHMRC of Australia, the Colonial Foundation of Australia, Kidney Health Australia, OATSIH (Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health), AUSHI (the Australia Centre for Health Services Research), and the UQ Global Change Institute, Servier Australia, Amgen, AstraZeneca and Sanofi Genzyme, Bayer and Roche.

Dr Hoy reviews for many clinical journals. She has supervised/co-supervised many PhD students, (with nine currently) and additional students for Master’s degrees and research electives. Graduates include professors of public health, medicine, paediatrics, neonatology and pathology, senior scientists, government employees and leaders of institutes, pharma and biotechnology. These include current Directors of the Menzies School of Research in Darwin, and the Australian New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant Registry (ANZDATA).

Dr Hoy is author/co-author of 317 peer reviewed manuscripts, several book chapters and many working papers. She has contributed to >800 scientific presentations, and given more than 175 presentations as Invited Speaker or Plenary Speaker at international and national meetings.

Awards and prizes. These include many prizes for the leading Leaving Certificate core in NSW/ACT; prizes in several subjects from Sydney University Medical School; the Austin Doyle Award, International Society of Hypertension and High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia, 1997; the Australian Medical Foundation Wyeth Prize for the best manuscript in MJA in 2000, and in 2002; the AKF Clinical Nephrology Award: 2002 and again (with Z Wang) in 2004; the Barry M. Brenner Lecture, American Society of Nephrology, 2006; International Society of Nephrology Sister Centre Program, 2006, for partnership with Ibadan, Nigeria; International Distinguished Medal of National Kidney Foundation (of the USA) for 2008; NHMRC Australian Research Fellowship- Australia’s preeminent award for health and medical research, for Dr Hoy’s research program “Chronic Disease in High Risk Populations” 2008-2012; and the Bernard Pimstone Memorial Lecture*, University of Cape Town, South Africa. In 2010, Dr Hoy was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) “for service to medical research in chronic disease, particularly renal disease, promotion of health service delivery reform and advocate for Indigenous health in Australia and the United States of America”. She also gave the invited John Dirk’s Annual Lecture, ISN, Vancouver, Canada, April 2011; was named one of 90 High Achievers in Health and Medical Research, in the history of NHMRC of Australia in 2014, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) in 2015. She was a also a CI in one of NHMRC’s “Ten of the Best Research Projects” in 2016.

Research Interests

  • Indigenous health research
  • Early determinants of adult health
  • Health systems modelling
  • Morphological and ultrastructural studies of the kidney
  • Chronic kidney disease of unknonw aetiology in Central America and Sri Lanka
  • Statewide surveillance of chronic kidney disease
  • Safe water

Qualifications

  • MBBS, The University of Sydney
  • Bachelor of Science Med, The University of Sydney

Publications

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Grants

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Supervision

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Available Projects

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Publications

Book Chapter

  • Kidney disease among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia

    McDonald, Stephen and Hoy, Wendy (2017). Kidney disease among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. In Guillermo Garcia-Garcia, Lawrence Agodoa and Keith Norris (Ed.), Chronic kidney disease in disadvantaged populations (pp. 167-180) London, United Kingdom: Academic Press (Elsevier Inc). doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-804311-0.00018-2

  • Prematurity, low-birth weight and CKD

    Hoy, Wendy E., Mott, Susan A. and Nicol, Jennifer L. (2017). Prematurity, low-birth weight and CKD. In Guillermo Garcia-Garcia, Lawrence Agodoa and Keith Norris (Ed.), Chronic kidney disease in disadvantaged populations (pp. 229-249) London, United Kingdom: Academic Press (Elsevier Inc). doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-804311-0.00023-6

  • Variation in human nephron number and association with disease

    Bertram, John F., Hughson, Michael D., Puelles, Victor G. and Hoy, Wendy E. (2015). Variation in human nephron number and association with disease. In Melissa Little (Ed.), Kidney development, disease, repair and regeneration (pp. 167-175) London: Academic Press.

  • Chronic kidney disease in Aboriginal Australians

    Hoy, W. E., Kondalsamy-Chennakesavan, S., McDonald, S. P., Cass, A., Singh, G. R., Bertram, J. F. and Hughson, M. D. (2005). Chronic kidney disease in Aboriginal Australians. In M. E. L. Nahas (Ed.), Kidney Disease in Ethnic Minorities and the Developing World (pp. 305-333) New York, U.S.: Taylor & Francis.

  • Diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance in an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory of Australia

    Hoy, W. E., Mathews, J. D., Hargrave, J. C. and Pugsley, D. J. (1996). Diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance in an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory of Australia. In Aboriginal health, social and cultural transitions (pp. 44-48) Darwin, NT, Australia: Northern Territory University.

  • Treatment of end stage renal disease in Aborigines in the Top End of the Northern Territory

    Hoy, Wendy E., Pugsley, D., Hayhurst, B. and Mathews, J. (1995). Treatment of end stage renal disease in Aborigines in the Top End of the Northern Territory. In Aboriginal Health, Social and Cultural Transitions (pp. 39-43) Darwin, Australia: Northern Territory University.

  • Epidemiology and public health perspectives of renal and urinary tract diseases

    Hoy, Wendy E. and Fitzsimmons, S. (1992). Epidemiology and public health perspectives of renal and urinary tract diseases. In John M. Last and Robert B. Wallace (Ed.), Maxcy Rosenau Last public health and preventive medicine 13th ed. () Norwalk, United States: Appleton and Lange.

  • Report of the North American Indian anthropology section

    Williams, RC, Troup, GM, Nelson, JL, Kostyu, DD, McAuley, JE, Pettitt, DJ, Knowler, WC, Templin, DW, Mickelson, EM, Hansen, JA and Hoy, Wendy E. (1992). Report of the North American Indian anthropology section. In Tsuji M, Aizawa M and Sasazuki T (Ed.), HLA 1991: Proceedings of the eleventh International Histocompatibility Workshop and Conference (pp. 683-685) Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

  • Enhancement of Drug Elimination in the Poisoned Patient

    Weintraub, M. and Hoy, W. E. (1981). Enhancement of Drug Elimination in the Poisoned Patient. In R Lawrence (Ed.), Poison Control () : .

  • Complications in renal transplant recipients

    Freeman, R. B., Hoy, W. E. and Pabico, R. C. (1980). Complications in renal transplant recipients. In G. E. Schreiner and J. F. Winchester (Ed.), Controversies in Nephrology 1980 (pp. 342-351) Washinton, DC, United States: Georgetown University Press.

Journal Article

Conference Publication

Other Outputs

Grants (Administered at UQ)

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • Primary Care in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, in an Urban Community Controlled Health Service

    Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

  • Predicting outcomes in kidney disease patients using novel machine learning models

    Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • CKD-Credits (CKD Centre for Research Excellence Diabetic kidney disease treated by specialists)

    Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

  • Use of plant extracts for the treatment of chronic kidney disease

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Biomarkers of Early Diagnosis and Progression of Chronic Kidney Disease: Inflammation, Fibrosis and Oxidative Stress

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

Completed Supervision

Possible Research Projects

Note for students: The possible research projects listed on this page may not be comprehensive or up to date. Always feel free to contact the staff for more information, and also with your own research ideas.

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ResearcherID: A-7325-2010

ORCID: 0000-0002-8405-1539

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