[1] Banks was appointed a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2017[2][3] and was made a member of the Order of Australia in 2021.

She completed a PhD in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2000, supervised by Dame Valerie Beral, while working as an epidemiologist in Oxford.

In Australia alone, an estimated 600–800 fewer women are now diagnosed with breast cancer annually, attributable to more judicious use of menopausal hormone therapy.

Banks was appointed a Professor of Epidemiology in 2010 and heads the Centre for Public Health Data and Policy at the Australian National University.

Banks' 2006 World Health Organization paper on female genital mutilation (FGM) and obstetric outcome[12] yielded the first reliable findings on the subject and resulted in a landmark cover publication in the Lancet in June 2006.

[14] Its findings are widely acknowledged as providing the key research evidence underpinning advocacy against female genital mutilation and influenced the UN Resolution on FGM.

[16] Her 2015 paper on smoking and mortality, which showed that up to two-thirds of Australian smokers will die from their habit, resulted in extensive public, research and policy discourse on smoking-related harms.