Judy Ryan

Judy Ryan is an Australian community campaigner, author and speaker whose work focuses on community health and practical, health-based responses to drug addiction. After raising her family in regional Victoria, she moved to inner-city Melbourne in 2012 and became involved in efforts to address the area’s heroin crisis. In 2016, she launched a residents’ campaign that ultimately helped secure a medically supervised injecting facility in Richmond.

Ryan’s community service was recognised with the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2022. In 2023, she received a Churchill Fellowship to study how communities affected by drugs engage governments to save lives through health-based solutions. She has also stood as a candidate in local, state and federal elections in Australia.

Ryan offers her experience and perspective through public speaking and her book, You Talk, We Die. The book is a personal account of residents organising to change the government response to addiction and its consequences.