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2016
19 December
This week we are wrapping up 2016 – looking back on some of the key stories for public health.
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12 December
This week the Croakey Conference News Service is RT-ing the news from a round-table meeting on Indigenous health and wellbeing in Canberra that is jointly convened by the Canadian High Commission, Australian Government, the Australian National University and the Lowitja Institute. Follow #AusCanIndigenousWellness and read more here.
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5 December
This week @ArabenaKerry & @YottiKingsley are tag-team covering the 4th International One Health Congress & 6th Biennal Congress of the International Association for Ecology and Health. More information about the conference is here. Also follow #OHEH2016.
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28 November
This week @OnTopicAus and @MegBastard are tag-team covering the launch of the #JustJustice book. Get your free e-copy here.
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21 November
This week @Shane_McArdle is in the chair for @AsbestosSafety covering the National Asbestos Awareness Week 21-27 November #NatAAW16.
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14 November
Melissa Cadzow – @MelissaCadzow – is passionate about health consumer voices being included in decision-making at the boardroom table. Over the past decade, she has served on a number of boards and committees, including many in her role as a health consumer. In health Melissa has broad interests in the areas of patient-centred care and meaningfully partnering with consumers, as well as special interests in digital health and children’s health. She also feels children’s voice in decisions and design is important. She has 25 years’ experience running her own company in the IT industry.
During the week she will be posting on issues from a health consumers’ point of view. She will also be tweeting from Mayo Clinic’s second international Healthcare and Social Media Summit, Melbourne: #MayoInOz.
Please note that all of her social media posts, including those via @WePublicHealth, do not reflect the views of businesses, committees or boards with which she is involved. Furthermore, retweets and re-posting do not equate to endorsements. Read more here.
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7 November
This week, @croakeyblog RT-ed the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses (CATSINaM) International Indigenous Health Workforce Meeting in Melbourne on November 7, followed by the Lowitja Institute’s first ever international conference from November 8-10.
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31 October
Alexandra Jones – @alikjones – a global health lawyer with a focus on food policy, and a PhD candidate at the @georgeinstitute is covering the #FoodGovernance2016 conference at the University of Sydney, with a tag-team of colleagues. Read more here. And see a more detailed tweet summary here.
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24 October
Kathryn Snow – @epi_punk – is an epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne, whose work focuses on tuberculosis and hepatitis C. She is covering the 47th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Liverpool, focusing on drug-resistant TB, TB/HIV co-infection, and TB in vulnerable populations.
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17 October
Scott Wilson (@ScottADAC), Director of the Aboriginal Drug and Alcohol Council (SA) Inc., shared the news and recommendations from the 4th National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Conference.
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10 October
This week, a tag team of tweeters is sharing the latest news from a campaign for a national strategy on climate and health. Read more here and on Twitter follow #ClimateHealthStategy.
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3 October
This week, Nyssa Skilton – @NyssaSkilton – is in the chair, sharing the latest news about reducing alcohol-related harms. Nyssa is the Deputy Editor of Public Health Research & Practice, an online, open-access journal that shares knowledge to make a real-world difference to public health policy and practice. Nyssa is a journalist by background and a mechanical engineer in a previous life. She specialises in science and medical writing and has previously worked for Australian Doctor and the Canberra Times.
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26 September
This week, Dr Karen McPhail-Bell, is in the chair (@solomon_kazza). Karen is an early career academic whose interest lies in the operation of power and control in relation to people’s health. Karen facilitates strengths-based and reciprocal processes in support of community-controlled and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led agendas. For her PhD, Karen collaborated with an Aboriginal community controlled health organisation and developed a model for decolonising health promotion.
Karen has policy and program experience across academic, government and non-government organisations in health equity, health promotion, and international development. Karen is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and Vice-President of the NSW branches of the Public Health Association of Australia and Australian Health Promotion Association. Karen is also a reviewer for several academic journals.
Karen is a non-Indigenous Australian with Irish, Scottish and English ancestry. She was born on Noongar land (Perth) but raised and lived for much of her life on Mununjali, Yugambeh, Jaggera and Turrbal land (Logan and Brisbane areas). Karen now lives and works on Wangal and Cadigal land in Sydney.
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19 September
This week the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (@AHPRA) highlights some of the key themes and discussions on medical regulation and education at the 12th International Conference on Medical Regulation #IAMRA2016 http://iamra2016.org.
Tweets will follow a range of sessions, including:
- Medical regulation – what are the core regulation issues and how are different organisations nationally and internationally making a difference?
- Perspectives from consumer and medical practitioners
- Shaping an old profession for a new society – What does the community need/want/expect?
- Medical regulation: using data to inform risk-based regulation
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12 September
This week @ACONhealth highlighted the health benefits of #MarriageEquality for #LGBTIQ communities.
ACON is #Here4Equality
www.acon.org.au
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5 September
Melissa Sweet, aka @croakeyblog, was in the chair to continue the #MarmotOz discussions.
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29 August
Dr Lucas de Toca –@LucasDeToca – is a doctor and public health expert focusing on health system improvement and health equity. Lucas is based in East Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, where he works as the Chief Health Officer at Miwatj Health, the regional Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service and the largest remote Indigenous health service in Australia.
He undertook medical school in Spain and Sydney, further training in Public Health at Harvard where he focused on public health leadership in health and human rights.
Lucas focused on the aftermath of the NT election and its implication for public health, particularly for remote Aboriginal health policy. He tweeted from Darwin and across communities in East Arnhem Land.
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22 August
One in six Australians is hearing impaired, Deaf or has an ear disorder.
Hearing Awareness Week 2016 is an Australian public health campaign to increase awareness of hearing as a health priority. This week @WePublicHealth duties will be shared by Kim Jones, chair of Hear for You, and David Brady, Chairperson of Deafness Forum. They will look at how we can help those in our community who cannot hear; a little, a lot or not at all.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
15 August
This week, Power to Persuade is hosting its annual symposium on Monday 15 August, titled ‘Creating healthy ecosystems for public policy’. It will be followed on Tuesday 16 August by the Women’s Policy Forum, to cast a gender lens over policy design and implementation in key areas impacting women’s wellbeing. Participants at both events will share hosting duties at @wepublichealth. See more about the program here: http://www.powertopersuade.org.au/2016-symposium/#ptp2016
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8 August
Melissa Stoneham –@DrMelStoneham – is the Deputy Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute of WA. She has worked in public health for over 25 years with interest and specialisation in environment and health, skin cancer prevention, public health policy, health promotion and advocacy. Melissa’s career highlights include her aid work with WHO and AusAID in Mozambique and with SPC (Secretariat of Pacific Communities) in the Pacific. She has worked for a diverse range of sectors and is passionate about maintaining a connection between academia and practitioner based work.
This week, Melissa will look at the different perspectives of the Rio 2016 Olympics, from unhealthy sponsorship, to how the Olympics motivate people to become active through to the effects the Olympics are having on the local people with an emphasis on those living in favelas. Having just visited Rio, Melissa is keen to share her experiences and those of the Rio Olympics.
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1 August
This week, the #JustJustice team is sharing news and resources about ways forward in preventing the over-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This follows the establishment of a Royal Commission into juvenile justice in the Northern Territory.
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25 July
Dr Ruth De Souza – @DeSouzaRN – is the Stream Leader, Research, Policy and Evaluation at the Centre for Culture, Ethnicity & Health. Her role is to to develop research evidence that supports CEH’s work in consumer participation, health literacy and cultural competence in the health and social care sector. After extensive experience as a clinician in mental health and maternal mental health, Ruth moved to the university sector where she has been an academic and researcher, and also has experience in governance, community technology planning and evaluation.
Ruth is going to cover the #WearablesCEH seminar, and explore the follow issues:
How are the concepts of consumer participation, health literacy and cultural competence changing in health care? What are the implications for public health?
To what extent do consumers meaningfully participate in the environments and platforms created through consumer health technologies. In particular, what role do consumers have in governance of health platforms – or are they primarily providers of data?
What are the components of literacy required by patients and healthcare provided today, where the data is no longer solely held with a clinician, but the clinician acts as a mediator between informal and authoritative knowledges?
How is competence in culture to be measured as it is technologised? Is technology itself a kind of culture, shifting the reproduction of ethnocultures? What does it mean for researchers to develop a technology to teach empathy <https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2016/06/27/stanfords-virtual-reality-lab-cultivates-empathy-for-the-homeless/>?
Do health technologies provide an opportunity for addressing health inequalities?
What are the intersections of race, class, gender, neoliberalism and health technology?
Can wearable health technologies enhance consumer participation agendas eg through co-design and shared decision making? How are asymmetric rates of learning and change driving the development of health/wellness tracking technology?
What are the implications of new health information technologies for the health care workforce?
What are the implications of new health information technologies for data ethics in the context of the secondary use of clinical data and aggregation of patient data?
Given the risk-averse nature of the healthcare technology sector, how to manage fear, among both practitioners and patients, around the use of new technologies, diagnostic techniques and therapies? Where does this leave trial and error? And what does this mean for the extent to which technological innovation can be experimented with and explored?
Apart from the potential of technology to optimise existing practices or to introduce speed, and other efficiencies, how can clinicians, healthcare administrators and technologists (ie not only those working in the humanities and social sciences) look critically at these technical capacities and ask seemingly obtuse questions?
What forces are directing the innovation and diffusion of various self-tracking systems in the current market place? Why might certain technologies remain underdeveloped or fail?
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18 July
Alison Verhoeven – @AlisonVerhoeven – is Chief Executive of the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association, the independent peak membership body and advocate for the Australian healthcare system and a national voice for universally accessible, high quality healthcare in Australia.
This week she will be tweeting a health briefing for the Turnbull Government and new Health Ministers, amongst other things.
Ms Verhoeven holds an MBA with a specialisation in International Business, a Master of Letters, a Graduate Diploma in Education, and a Bachelor of Arts. Her professional affiliations include membership of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian Institute of Management. She has broad experience in health, education, corporate governance and communications, and has worked in both the private and public sectors in Australia, the Asia-Pacific region, and Europe.
See a summary of the week’s tweets at Croakey.
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11 July
The Queanbeyan Deadly Runners group – @QDRdeadlyrun – motivates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to reach their running and fitness goals. QDR is headed up by Georgia Gleeson.
This week, a tag-team of tweeters is spreading the news about this Start Some Good project to send some of the QDR to run in the 2016 Maui Marathon in Hawaii. QDR is a life-changing group that commences with an 8-week running program for beginners.
Running with QDR has helped build participant’s confidence levels through accomplishment of running races, as well as a framework for setting and achieving life goals. QDR are role models and mates; families; fathers and sons; mother and daughters.
The squad heading to Maui is made up of 22 athletes of all ages, shapes and abilities and some who are living with challenges including but not limited to chronic health conditions, depression and post-traumatic stress. Some QDR members are also survivors of cancer and major operations.
Read more here: queanbeyandeadlyrunners.com
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4 July
Covering #NAIDOC2016 is Summer May Finlay – @OnTopicAus. Summer is a Yorta Yorta woman who grew up in Lake Macquarie near Newcastle. She engages with Croakey in a number of capacities, including as a member of the #JustJustice project, and has reported for the Croakey Conference News Service. Summer is currently undertaking a PhD with the University of South Australia, has a Master of Public Health Advanced majoring in social marketing from the University of Wollongong and a Bachelor of Social Science majoring in linguistics from Macquarie University. Summer has worked in a number of different areas relating to Aboriginal health and social justice. Summer works in Aboriginal health in a policy and research capacity, and has also worked at the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples (Congress) in Policy and Communications roles. She spent two and a half years at the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council of NSW and at the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation respectively. Summer also has four years’ experience as a youth and children’s worker.
Read her reflections on NAIDOC week here.
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27 June
This week GP, medical writer, blogger (iofthet.blogspot.com.au and amsdr.blogspot.com.au) and #WonkyHealth author Dr Tim Senior – @timsenior – is helping us countdown to the Federal Election. His bio: I practice, teach, develop policy and write about general practice and primary care, particularly its role in working effectively in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. I graduated from the Sydney Leadership Program in 2010. I successfully crowdfunded Wonky Health, a regular column at Croakey, the Crikey health blog, looking at health effects of policy decisions. You can find the columns at http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/?cat=46697
I won the inaugural Gavin Mooney Memorial Essay Competition in 2014. You can read that here: http://inside.org.au/climate-change-and-equity-whose-language-is-it-anyway/
I write regularly for the British Journal of General Practice.
You can find examples of my writing here: http://iofthet.blogspot.com.au/p/blog-page.html
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21 June
Covering the 23rd AHPA National Health Promotion Conference in Perth this week is a tag-team of tweeters. Follow #ahpa2016.
Kelly Blackburn:
Kelly is the Community Development Officer, Health and Wellbeing at the City of Palmerston. Having previously worked for CCWA in the Education and Research team, Kelly focuses on all things prevention in health. She is an AHPA member, PHAIWA Advocacy Program Mentor and keen public health advocate. With a background in Public Health Nutrition, Kelly is also a lover of all things food!
Kelly will be tweeting from the @WePublicHealth Twitter account on Monday of the AHPA® conference.
Carl Heslop:
Carl is a Jack-of-all-trades, master of Public Health; Rural-based PhD candidate Registered Nurse! Carl has worked on the Australian Drug Foundation’s Good Sports Program for three years and is a Public Health PhD candidate focused on rural-based sexual health. Still treading the light fantastic between hands-on nursing, research and health promotion; Carl is interested in work that focusses on youth, risk-taking, sexual health, alcohol and other drugs and the rural setting. Carl will be tweeting from the @WePublicHealth Twitter account on Tuesday of the AHPA® conference.
Lisa Rooke:
Lisa is an active member of the Australian Health Promotion Association and has held positions with the WA Branch from Secretary to Vice-President. She is most proud to be working as an ex-officio to support the Branch’s first Reconciliation Action Plan. A strong supporter of community members being in charge of their own health, Lisa has enjoyed working in communities from Noongar country in Wheatbelt Western Australia to Warlpiri country in Yuendumu, Northern Territory. She currently works within a team at the Department of Transport WA that runs the Your Move program, which supports and motivates people and organisations to walk, ride bikes and catch public transport to get healthy and avoid traffic congestion. A budding pracademic, Lisa balances her work with student life working towards a Master of Public Health at Curtin University.
Lisa will be tweeting from @WePublicHealth Twitter account on Wednesday through to Sunday covering the AHPA® conference and its wrap up.
Policy at Cancer Council Victoria. The OPC is a partnership of Cancer Council Victoria, Diabetes Australia Victoria, the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University. In her role at OPC, Jane advocates for policy and regulatory reform to prevent overweight and obesity, with a focus on food marketing, labelling, and tax and pricing measures.
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13 June
Following on from last week’s call for increased recognition of prevention in our federal political priorities, this week we will be focusing on the need and opportunity for federal action on obesity prevention. We will be showcasing opportunities and would love to hear others’ thoughts on how our federal government can act to achieve real progress with obesity prevention. We argue that there is a need for a national consensus on federal actions for obesity prevention.
Anna Peeters (@AnnaPeetersAus) and Jane Martin (@JaneMartinOPC) will be hosting the week, focusing on;
*the increasing profile of obesity prevention world-wide;
*what governments can and are doing. Tell us your examples…
*why the time is right for federal action,
*community sentiment
* federal policies that could make a real difference to healthy eating in regional and remote communities
*specifics on what the Australian government can do to prevent obesity. Tell us your thoughts!
Anna is Professor of Epidemiology and Equity in Public Health & Head of Obesity and Population Health in the School of Health and Social Development at Deakin University. Anna is also Past President of the Australian & New Zealand Obesity Society. She is a public health researcher, particularly interested in the provision of information to facilitate objective and equitable choices in public health by policy makers, practitioners and the public.
Jane is Executive Manager of the Obesity Policy Coalition (OPC) and of Alcohol and Obesity Policy at Cancer Council Victoria. The OPC is a partnership of Cancer Council Victoria, Diabetes Australia Victoria, the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University. In her role at OPC, Jane advocates for policy and regulatory reform to prevent overweight and obesity, with a focus on food marketing, labelling, and tax and pricing measures.
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6 June
Prevention 1st (@Prevention1stAU) is a campaign calling on all Australian governments and political parties to commit to a strong preventive health agenda to tackle Australia’s greatest health challenge: chronic disease.
Chronic diseases are responsible for 83 per cent of all premature deaths in Australia and 66 per cent of the burden of disease. They include conditions such as heart disease, dementia, stroke, chronic kidney disease, lung disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. Dealing with chronic disease comes at an estimated $27 billion cost to the Australian community and accounts for more than a third (36 per cent) of our national health budget.
Prevention 1st is backed by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (@FAREAustralia), Public Health Association of Australia (@_PHAA_), Alzheimer’s Australia (@AlzheimersAus) and the Consumer’s Health Forum of Australia (@CHFofAustralia), and recently launched an election campaign which proposes seven steps to address the chronic disease epidemic (outlined in the Prevention 1st 2016 Election Platform: Our greatest health challenge).
Last week more than twenty-five health and community leaders, including Ita Buttrose AO OBE, Dr Rosemary Stanton OAM, Professor Ian Webster AO, and June Oscar AO, signed an open letter urging all political leaders and parties to put preventive health policy first this election.
This week, the four organisations behind Prevention 1st will be tweeting about #healthelection16 and the need for action on public policy that the evidence shows will stop and prevent the rising burden of chronic disease. In particular, we’ll be focusing on one of the seven areas outlined in the election platform each day of the week.
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30 May
During this week of World No Tobacco Day, @ACONwomen talks all things #WNTD2016 and #SmokeFreeStillFierce campaign launching this week.
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23 May
This week is National Palliative Care Week (22-28 May). A number of organisations are getting together to tweet about a range of end of life care and palliative care activities this week.
Rebecca Bartel (@RebeccaBartel) Executive Director from The Australian Centre for Health Research (@ACHRorg) is launching the Australian edition of @deathoverdinner. This is an exciting interactive website dedicated to giving people the permission and the tools to discuss their choices and thoughts on end of life and End of Life Care with their friends and loved ones. They have a number of launch events on this week.
Liz Callaghan (@PCACEO) CEO of Palliative Care Australia, the peak national body for palliative care, and her team will be tweeting from a range of events planned for National Palliative Care Week.
The Palliverse team (@palliverse) will be attending a range of events this week and will be contributing their experience and expertise. If you are around, join the #PallANZ tweetchat 26 May 2016 (7pm Sydney time) on the the topic of “Living Well with Chronic Illness”, the theme of Australia’s National Palliative Care Week (#NPCW16).
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16 May
Aram Hosie – @AramHosie – is Executive Manager Public Affairs at @cohealth_au
One of Australia’s largest community health organisations, coheath’s mission is to improve health and wellbeing for all, and to tackle inequality in partnership with people and their communities. Originally graduating as an Occupational Therapist, Aram’s career has spanned service delivery, policy, leadership and public affairs roles across a number of contexts including mental health, alcohol and drug, Aboriginal affairs and community health in both the government and non-government sectors.
Aram is also a Board Director for the Victorian AIDS Council and has a long history of advocacy on LGBTI rights and health issues in Australia and internationally – work for which he was recognised in 2015 as a Human Rights (Community) Award Finalist.
Aram will be using his time at the helm of the @wepublichealth account to cover the 2016 VICSERV #TowardsRecovery conference and other health news as it develops.
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9 May
Rhonda Wilson – @RhondaWilsonMHN – is a registered nurse with diverse rural nursing clinical expertise. She is a mental health nurse researcher with a particular interest in the mental health and drug and alcohol health care of young people in rural and regional communities. Rhonda is an active member of the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses and the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives. She is a Member of the University of New England Human Research Ethics Committee.
Rhonda’s scholarly and research interests include the development of e-health strategies and the use of social media amongst health professionals. She is an advocate for rural mental health and contributes to contemporary rural health conversations in social media such as Twitter @RhondaWilsonMHN #RuralMH. Rhonda has a regular ABC radio series ‘Bush Remedies: You and your mental health’
Rhonda lectures in the under graduate and post graduate nursing and mental health courses and she supervises a number of higher degree research students in the School of Health.
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2 May
Jane Martin – @janemartinopc – is executive manager of the Obesity Policy Coalition and will be tweeting from Vancouver at the International Congress on Obesity ICO. Follow #ICO2016. The OPC is a partnership of Cancer Council Victoria, Diabetes Victoria and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University; with funding from VicHealth. The OPC advocates for policy and regulatory reform around unhealthy food marketing, tax and pricing measures, and food labelling issues. Jane has a Bachelor of Arts and Masters in Public Health and has fellowships at Melbourne and Deakin Universities. Jane is the Vice-President of the Australia New Zealand Obesity Society, a board member of Family Planning Victoria and an alumnus of the Williamson Leadership program. She was the recipient of the Jack Brockhoff Churchill Fellowship travelling to the US and UK to study advocacy strategies in obesity prevention. She writes, presents, publishes and is often called upon to comment in the media on obesity prevention policy issues.
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25 April
Mark Metherell, Communications Director for the Consumers Health Forum of Australia, is discussing health issues in the run-up to the Federal Budget and Federal election. Mark is a former Fairfax health journalist of many years experience. Follow @MetherellMark
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18 April
Dr Alana Mann – @alana_mann – is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney and a researcher in the Sydney Environment Institute’s Food, People and the Planet node and the Charles Perkins Centre. She is a member of the Right to Food Coalition and sits on the committee of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance. Her book Global Activism in Food Politics: Power Shift was published in 2014. She will focus on urban food insecurity, considering contributing factors such as lack of affordable housing and poor access to transport, and how planners are addressing these issues.
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11 April
Luke Craven – @LukeCraven – is a PhD Candidate at the University of Sydney and the Sydney Environment Institute. His interests lie in the application of social and political theory to contemporary policy problems, with a focus on food politics, policy, and system reform. He will be previewing the launch of the Right to Food Coalition and a Food Security Research Forum that is to be hosted by Monash and Deakin Universities.
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4 April
Elissa Elvidge – @ElissaElvidge – is a PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle (primary supervisor is Prof Yin Paradies, Deakin University). Her research is titled “An Aboriginal cultural safety and security framework for NSW hospitals”. Elissa hopes that by producing the first empirically validated Aboriginal Cultural Safety and Security framework, this research will provide the methodological foundation for further research and policy that will contribute to improving both the accessibility and acceptability of hospitals for Aboriginal people in NSW. Elissa has over 7 years experience working in public health at Hunter New England Local Health District, Population Health Unit (2007-2014). During this time she was part of several teams including: the HIV and Related Programs, sexual health promotion team, an Influenza surveillance program as part of the Acute Response team and she was also a member of the Cultural Redesign Advisory committee. In the CRA committee she was part of a team who developed ways of ensuring that the population health programs and workplace culture was culturally safe and free from racism. It was during this time that she developed a passion for cultural safety. Elissa’s academic interests include working with marginalised communities to improve health equity, racism as a social determinant of health, and using social media in public health research. Elissa will be tweeting about her experiences working in public health, cultural safety, her research methods and is particularly interested in hearing from clinicians about how they “do” cultural safety.
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28 March
The #TalkingTeeth series is in the spotlight this week. In the chair are Professor Marc Tennant – @MarcTennant – and Professor Estie Kruger – @EstieNikla1 – from the International Research Collaborative – Oral Health and Equity at the Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia. Read more about the series here.
Winthrop Professor Marc Tennant and Professor Estie Kruger
The International Research Collaborative Oral Health and Equity, Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia
Marc and Estie (along with their colleague Professor Kate Dyson) have been working together for nearly two decades on addressing the issues of oral health and marginalisation. The team started out as the Centre for Rural and Remote Oral Health that has now evolved into the International Research Collaborative Oral Health and Equity. They are the leading dental public health team in Australia with graduate students and Fellows now spread all over the planet. Their team of some 150 Fellows and 40 active graduate students work on diverse issues ranging from forensic identification through to large scale mathematical modelling. The team publishes in the international peer review literature at the rate of about a paper a fortnight. Their efforts in addressing inequities have seen them build the discipline of rural, remote and Indigenous oral health into a thriving area of activity in Australia. The team is responsible for the development of the gold-standard model of remote area dental care, with a strong community lead focus. The team has also played substantial roles in the development of all of Australia’s new dental schools and were instrumental in the new now universally accepted models of dental education in Australia. The multi-award winning team are leads in their field; most recently Professors Dyson and Tennant being made Fellows of St Catherine’s College at UWA, with Professor Kruger winning multiple awards for her teaching. More importantly their students have won awards all over the world including the Prime Ministers Award in Australia and others winning excellence awards from the Saudi Government.
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21 March
Craig Dalton – @CraigBDalton – is a public health physician and founder of www.flutracking.net. As convenor of the 3rd International Workshop on Participatory Surveillance in Newcastle 22-24th March, he will be tweeting about innovations and challenges in tech leveraged participatory public health surveillance. IWOPS3 is hosted by @HMRIAustralia and funded by @SkollGlobal.
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14 March
It is timely to have Mary Freer – @FreerMary – in the chair during the week of #ChangeDayAus (16 March). To date, more than 60,000 pledges have been made, making this the largest mobilisation of people towards health improvement in Australia. Mary founded Australia’s first Change Day, held on 6th March 2014. This national quality improvement campaign resulted in over 15,000 individuals and organisations making a pledge to do one thing to improve patient and client outcomes. In 2015 Change Day Australia engaged 50,000 people in making a pledge for improvement. This work can be seen at change day.com.au. Over many years Mary has contributed to Australia’s national health and social care reform agenda through her work with state and commonwealth agencies. She has held leadership positions with national government and not for profit health care and social welfare services, including women’s and community health services, healthdirect Australia, the Department of the Premier and Cabinet in South Australia, Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Health Workforce Australia and now as Director of freerthinking and CEO of Change Day Australia.
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7 March
Kellie Tranter – @Kellietranter – is a lawyer, human rights activist and producer of @humanrightshr. She will tweet about health in the context of climate change and human rights.
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29 February
Aine Healy is the Director Advocacy, at the NSW Council for intellectual disability. She plays a key role in establishing and maintaining local, statewide and national connections on key policy issues, establishing strategic directions, and ensuring that CID is both responsive to the concerns of people with intellectual disability and led by them. She has a long history of working in partnership with people with cognitive disability, and combines those skills with strengths in network development, collaborative partnering with government and non government agencies, and systemic advocacy on issues of importance to people with intellectual disability.
CID Senior Advocate Jim Simpson, who shares the @nswcid handle with Aine, has been a long time campaigner on improving health for people with intellectual disability. He has led many initiatives for CID including successful campaigning for improved access to Medicare, coordination of the 1st National Roundtable on the Mental Health of people with intellectual disability and publishing the resources “Healthier Lives” Health Fact Sheets.
CID is a 60-year-old organisation, led by people with intellectual disability – with the majority of Board Members being people with an intellectual disability. CID undertakes a range of functions – systemic advocacy, providing policy advice, expert representation and operates a specialist information service. Health and mental health are two priority campaign areas for CID given that there are over 300,000 people with intellectual disability in Australia and they have very high rates of health problems. These problems are often not diagnosed or well treated. CID works with social change agents, health professionals, government and service providers with the aim of improving the health of people with intellectual disability. CID wants to make sure people with intellectual disability have the support they need to get healthy and stay healthy.
CID tweets from @nswcid & is excited to be tweeting from @wepublichealth this week and raising the profile of the health needs of people with intellectual disability and encouraging others to include people with intellectual disability in broad health reform strategies.
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22 February
Jessica Gregory – @JessKBGregory is the Communications and Media Officer at ANROWS, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety.
Amongst other things, she will be tweeting this week from #ANROWS2016, which is also being covered by the Croakey Conference News Service.
Previously she worked on policy, communications and media projects at Domestic Violence Victoria, the peak body for family violence services in Victoria.
Jess has worked in communications for non-profit organisations as diverse as the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival and her local community house. She also gained governance experience as a board member of the community house.
Jess has a Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) and a Diploma of Modern Languages (French) from the University of Melbourne. She has written for numerous magazines and websites including Crikey and My French Life.
While completing her studies Jess was the green room contact for the ABC television programs Insiders and Offsiders. This role led to a keen interest in politics, media and social change.
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15 February
Daniel James – @mrdtjames – is a Yorta Yorta man with a lifelong passion for social justice and health equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Daniel is currently the Program Manager of National Aboriginal Health Outcomes at the National Heart Foundation.
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8 February
Melissa Stoneham – @DrMelStoneham – is the Deputy Director at the Public Health Advocacy Institute in Western Australia. She is passionate about advocating for change, Indigenous issues, succession planning in public health and mentoring. She is involved in a range of public health issues but this week will be tweeting from the International Gambling Conference being held at the Auckland University of Technology – follow #IGC2016 and @IGCnz.
The IGC receives no funding or support from the gambling industry and has brought together a range of researchers, practitioners and policy makers to discuss how to prevent harm in the shifting world of gambling.
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1 February
Professor Bernadette McSherry is the Foundation Director of the Melbourne Social Equity Institute at the University of Melbourne and an Adjunct Professor of Law at both the Melbourne Law School and the Faculty of Law at Monash University. She researches and writes in the fields of criminal law and mental health law and is the author/editor and co-author/co-editor of ten books, 25 book chapters and over 150 journal articles.Bernadette is President of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law and a legal member of the Victorian Mental Health Tribunal. Her current research projects funded by the Australian Research Council and other funding bodies are investigating ways of regulating the use of seclusion and restraint in health care settings in different countries; what supported decision-making means for individuals with severe mental health issues and finding alternatives to preventive detention for accused persons considered unfit to stand trial.
The Melbourne Social Equity Institute is a ‘virtual’ research institute which connects researchers from a range of disciplines with community members, practitioners and policymakers to identify unjust or unfair practices that lead to social inequity and work towards finding ways to ameliorate disadvantage. More information is at www.socialequity.unimelb.edu.au
This week, Bernadette will be tweeting about mental health law issues and also tweeting some of the sessions at the Melbourne Social Equity Institute’s Conference on Disability, Human Rights and Social Equity #socialequity16
She’ll do her best not to tweet about the Collingwood Football Club #gopies Bernadette tweets using @bmcsherr and the Melbourne Social Equity Institute tweets using @MSEI_UniMelb
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25 January
Megan Williams – @MegBastard – is a Senior Research Fellow with the Muru Marri Collaboration in the Centre for Health Research at Western Sydney University. She conducts research at the nexus of health and justice, focussing on the leadership and wellbeing of Aboriginal people.
Megan is a chief investigator of an ARC-funded positive life pathways research and associate investigator with the NHMRC-funded Centre for Research Excellence on Offender Health and Indigenous Offender Capacity Building Grant at UNSW. Megan has also been awarded several government research contracts and competitive evaluation tenders.
Megan’s work has been endorsed by the Lowitja Institute, Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research Institute, and she is a research associate with the Mibbinbah Aboriginal men’s health promotion charity ‘Be the Best You Can Be’ Working Group.
Megan’s program of research at Western Sydney University focusses on understanding strategies to reduce the 80% recidivism rates among Aboriginal prisoner populations. Megan brings together her 20 years’ history combining research and evaluation with community health service delivery and governance.
Megan is a descendent of the Wiradjuri people of the NSW riverine, and also has European heritage. Her current research builds on insights from her PhD research, for which she received a UNSW Medicine Dean’s Rising Star Award. As well as evidence on ‘what works’ to reduce recidivism from an Aboriginal perspective, Megan is interested in service delivery and policy mechanisms for enacting Aboriginal peoples’ right to self-determine support, and understanding the role of mainstream service providers in improving the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system.
In terms of research translation and public health advocacy, Megan has a decade of experience in undergraduate and postgraduate Aboriginal health and wellbeing teaching, with Muru Marri colleagues winning a UNSW Vice Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence and being nominated for such at UQ. Megan was a founding director of Project 10%, an Aboriginal-led company campaigning for policy reform and integration, and she has collaborated in multi-disciplinary groups to produce community resources such as case studies, life histories and a well-travelled group discussion guide to accompany the Australian feature film, Mad Bastards.
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18 January
Bree Knoester is a Partner at Holding Redlich, a national law firm with its origins in acting for injured workers. Bree is now a Partner in the firm’s personal injury division – Adviceline Injury Lawyers – and is the Partner in Charge of their Asbestos Litigation Practice, Springvale and Gippsland Practice.
For over 12 years Bree has acted for individuals injured at work, on the road, in public places or as a result of exposure to harmful substances like asbestos. Bree specializes in catastrophic injury claims in particular acting for infants and young persons.
Prior to joining Holding Redlich/Adviceline Injury Lawyers, Bree was a Barrister at the Victorian Bar for eight years. Bree was involved in in many of the largest cases and settlements in personal injury litigation in Victoria as well as landmark cases involving compensation paid to victims of sexual abuse and acting for journalists suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. Bree regularly appeared in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. She was a Member of the Victorian Bar Ethics Committee, Readers Course Committee and Bar Council.
Bree received a Masters of Law from Monash University which focused on health and the law. Bree has published on issues regarding psychological injuries in the workplace, particularly as suffered by those working in the media and emergency services, life expectancy and the challenges faced by those injured by family members and the uninsured.
Bree is on the Board of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, a project of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (New York), which provides journalists around the world with the resources and support necessary to report on violence, conflict and tragedy.
Bree grew up in the Latrobe Valley and at an early age wanted to advocate for the rights of those in the local community. Once she was admitted to practice and commenced her legal career, she remained heavily involved in cases for injured workers in the Latrobe Valley. Growing up in Traralgon, Bree witnessed first-hand the devastating effect of the widespread asbestos use that had occurred up until the 1980s at many of the Latrobe Valley industries and employers.
Latrobe Valley power industry workers contract mesothelioma at seven times the state average. Over 140 000 Latrobe Valley power station workers were exposed to asbestos between the 1920s and 1980s.
Bree has now opened a regional office in the Latrobe Valley to service clients who deserve expert legal advice but cannot come to metropolitan Melbourne. Bree is passionate about the health issues affecting this part of Victoria which continues to bear the burden of its asbestos legacy and now experiences ongoing issues following bushfires and mine fires. Bree is an active member of the Asbestos Council of Victoria.
This week Bree will be looking at the intersection between our environment and our health – and how this often intersects with the law. Bree’s focus will be threefold:
- Regional Victoria – fires, floods and dust – the effect on our population
- Occupational hazards – why work can be bad for our health
- The global environment – toxic torts and Big Business
Bree tweets using @breeknoester and co-authors tweets at @AdviceLineLaw, providing free legal information to followers.
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11 January
Dr Graham Mackenzie is a Consultant in Public Health Medicine, NHS Lothian, Edinburgh, Scotland. He graduated 1995, working initially in general medicine and cardiology.
In 2001 he started in Public Health training, taking up his current post in 2008 with a remit for women and children. Graham has had a wide range of research interests including cardiovascular disease and statins, hip fracture and thromboembolism (the subject of his MD thesis) and more recently food vouchers in child poverty (paper submitted for peer review Dec 2015).
He wrote the chapter on child public health in Oxford Specialist Handbook of Community Paediatrics (Oxford Specialist Handbooks 2012).
Graham is married, with 3 children. Interests outside work include music (plays saxophone and clarinet in a band), cycling, reading and travel (though he’s never been to Australia).
Graham tweets using @gmacscotland, and has recently been experimenting with setting up a social media network for Public Health in Scotland (http://www.scotpublichealth.com )
Plans for @WePublicHealth
The second #scotpublichealth #publichealthhour will be 3 Feb 2016, 11AM-noon UK time.
While guest editing @wepublichealth, Graham plans to look at 4 themes: “something old, something new, someone followed, and a hint of #ScotPublicHealth”.
Tweets on these four themes will be labelled with:
#PublicHealthArchive (something old – see https://storify.com/gmacscotland/a-public-health-century-aphcentury-full-version … … – expanding this to look at public health progress across the world from the past 2 centuries)
#PublicHealthNews (looking at Public Health stories from around the world)
#PublicHealthTag (like the playground game, in an attempt to network with public health colleagues across the world)
#ScotPublicHealth (stories from public health in Scotland, or shared by the Scottish Public Health community – http://scotpublichealth.com/ )
Join this social media experiment
Please join us during the week by tweeting a selfie showing your Public Health priority for 2016. Use #PublicHealthTag in your tweet.
Here’s why:
- Public Health and social media are collective endeavours. They’re better when we involve others.
- There are a number of Public Health challenges that are the same around the world eg inequalities, obesity, antibiotic resistance, demographic changes with an ageing population, the impact of cuts and austerity. We can all learn from each other.
So let’s try to meet some new people with common interests around the world.
Mention a colleague, inviting them to take part. Include a link to this blog.
I’ll collect the tweets by public health theme in a Storify.
If the idea works, we can treat this as a Public Health directory for 2016. Tweet, take part, think broadly about people you’d like to involve and invite them to take part.
Search Twitter for #PublicHealthTag to see who else is engaged.
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