Kelsey Hegarty, a general practitioner, is the Professor of Family Violence Prevention at the University of Melbourne and Royal Women’s Hospital (Melbourne, Australia). She leads the Safer Families Centre aiming to transform the health system to address domestic, family and sexual violence. She is recognised globally as an expert on screening and early intervention responses in the health care setting, and health system change to promote trauma and violence informed care. She has provided extensive advice to the World Health Organization, including co-chairing the guidelines group for addressing intimate partner and sexual violence in health settings in 2025.

Kelsey’s passion for this field is driven by social justice, the need to improve women’s health and her own lived experience as a child. She saw in her clinical practice 25 years ago that she was missing the ‘underneath story’ of domestic violence for many women because she wasn’t asking about abuse and violence. She was not trained in medical school or general practice training, not were there any systems in place in health settings to support this sensitive work. She set about to change this for future health practitioners, partnering with a group of survivors called WEAVERs who weave their lived expertise into training, research and advocacy in the area of domestic, family and sexual violence.