In 2019, Morton was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to epidemiology and public health research.
She worked on a dataset collected by Raymond Illsley, Professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Aberdeen in the 1960s, and showed that a woman's childhood social environment and growth influenced the birth weight of her children.
[2][3] At this point she became interested in longitudinal studies, and "the opportunity to provide evidence that could inform policy and make a difference by actually understanding what lived realities were about, rather than just looking at routine statistics or big data.
[3] In early 2023 Morton was appointed as the inaugural Director of INSIGHT, a pan-university research centre focused on population health, based at the University of Technology Sydney.
[4][5] In 2019, Morton was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to epidemiology and public health research.