Faculty

John D Potter

Professor Emeritus, Epidemiology


Education

MBBS Medicine, University of Queensland (Australia), 1971
PhD Epidemiology, University of Queensland (Australia), 1984

Contact


Bio

John D Potter is Chief Science Advisor, New Zealand (NZ) Ministry of Health, as well as: Professor at CPHR, Massey University, Wellington, NZ; Adjunct Professor at University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ; and Senior Advisor, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) and Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology at the University of Washington,

After 5 years of clinical medicine, Potter worked at CSIRO Division of Human Nutrition, Adelaide (1977-1986), completing his PhD and beginning his close partnership with Tony McMichael. Then, in the US, he held increasingly senior posts at the Universities of Minnesota and Washington and FHCRC (including as Director of its Division of Public Health Sciences).

Potter chaired the international panel that produced Food, Nutrition, and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective (1997). He is founding co-chair of the Asia Cohort Consortium, a collaborative cohort study across Asia of 1.1 million people.

International awards include: India’s Gopalan Oration Gold Medal for nutrition science (1996); American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) DeWitt Goodman Lectureship for international leadership in research in nutrition, cancer, and cancer prevention (2000); the US National Cancer Institute Annual Advances in Cancer Prevention Award (2005); AACR-American Cancer Society Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention (2009); and the 2012 Medal of Honour of IARC.

Research Areas

Research Interests

Cancer biology, epidemiology, early detection, and prevention; nutrition; planetary health

Recent Publications (PubMed)

Clinical Outcome Differences in Asia Versus Non-Asia Intracerebral Hemorrhage: IPD Analysis From BP-Lowering Clinical Trials.
(2026 Oct 14)
Stroke
You S, Ouyang M, Moullaali TJ, Sandset EC, Woodhouse LJ, Li Q, Song L, Law ZK, Ren X, Han Q, Chen C, Arima H, Butcher K, Delcourt C, Cao Y, Krishnan K, Edwards L, Gupta S, Jiang W, Koch S, Potter J, Qureshi AI, Robinson TG, Al-Shahi Salman R, Saver JL, Sprigg N, Wardlaw J, Anderson CS, Bath PM, Chalmers J, Wang X, BASC
Tumor microbial biodiversity and microsatellite instability in colorectal cancer.
(2026)
PLoS One 21(9): e0359555
Mendall C, Hullar MAJ, Curtis KR, Hill CM, Thomas CE, Ma N, Randolph TW, Malen RC, Reedy AM, LaBrie S, Potter JD, Ogino S, Newcomb PA, Phipps AI
Incidence Rates of Melanoma and Lung Cancer Are Generally Low in the Lynch Syndromes and Vary Across path_MMR Variants: A Prospective Lynch Syndrome Database Report.
(2026 Jul 7)
Cancers (Basel) 18(13):
Potter JD, Macrae FA, Sampson JR, Haupt S, Seppälä TT, Cameron-Mackintosh S, Ahadova A, Kloor M, Møller P, Plsd Collaborators
Is health a basic human right or a commodity? Travelling the difficult road towards equity of outcomes.
(2026 Mar 27)
N Z Med J 139(1632): 92-100
Bagshaw P, Potter JD, Goddard J, McDonald F, Bagshaw S, Roskruge M, Ahiro G
Subsequent primary cancer risks for non-hereditary colorectal cancer survivors.
(2026 Feb)
EClinicalMedicine 92(): 103716
Aung YK, Jenkins MA, Baxter NN, Potter JD, Schmit SL, Samadder JJ, Newcomb PA, Buchanan DD, Win AK
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