We are pleased to announce the following invited keynote speakers.
Opening Plenary – Sir Mason Durie
Massey University, New Zealand
Sir Mason Durie (Rangitane, Ngati Kauwhata and Ngati Raukawa), is currently Professor of Maori Research and Development and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Maori & Pasifika) at Massey University and is on the governing body of Te Wananga o Raukawa, a tribal tertiary education institution. He chairs the New Zealand Vice Chancellors’ Mãori Advisory Standing Committee (Te Kahui Amokura) and is also chair of the Massey University Academy for Mäori Research and Scholarship. His research interests include Maori health with a special focus on mental health, Maori development and Maori futures planning. Sir Mason, one of New Zealand’s most highly respected academics grew up in Feilding, Manawatu-Wanganui, graduated Medicine in 1963 from the University of Otago and in 1970 completed specialist training in psychiatry at McGill University, Montreal. 1986-88 saw Professor Durie as the Director of Psychiatry at Palmerston North Hospital and then a member of the Royal Commission on Social Policy and in 1988 was appointed to the Chair in Mäori Studies at Massey University, where he graduated as a Doctor of Literature in 2003. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand since 1995 and a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit since 2001. In 2009 he was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Otago University. Sir Mason has published four books and many journal articles on health policy, Mäori mental health, and indigenous development and is a member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians’ Maori Health Committee.
Priscilla Kincaid-Smith Oration – Professor David Simmons
Cambridge University Hospitals, United Kingdom
David Simmons is the lead diabetes consultant at the Institute of Metabolic Science/Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Cambridge, England and Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He has previously worked as Professor of Rural Health at the University of Melbourne and Professor of Medicine at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has been president of the Australasian Diabetes in Pregnancy Society, Co-chair of the Australian National Diabetes in Pregnancy Advisory Committee, Co-chair of the New Zealand National GDM Working Group and currently co-chairs the Diabetes UK Health Professional Education Working Group. He is the 2009 Joseph Hoet award recipient for his work relating to diabetes in pregnancy. In the past he has established various services including diabetes specialist clinics integrated with primary care in rural and Indigenous communities, multidisciplinary services in diabetes in pregnancy, community based diabetes prevention activities among Maori and Pacific people, and diabetes support groups in the UK and NZ. He has over 200 publications.
Cottrell Lecture – Associate Professor Noel Hayman
Inala Indigenous Health Service, Brisbane Australia
Associate Professor Noel Hayman was one of the first two Indigenous medical students to graduate from the University of Queensland in 1990. Noel’s current position is Clinical Director of the Inala Indigenous Health Service in Brisbane. Noel has been instrumental in demonstrating how mainstream primary health care services can be made appropriate to the needs of urban Aboriginal populations through the development of the Inala Indigenous Health Service. His interests include improving Indigenous access to mainstream health services and medical education in the context of Indigenous health. Associate Professor Hayman received the 2003 Centenary Medal for his long service to primary health care in Aboriginal communities and the Inaugural Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation Queensland ‘Close the Gap Indigenous Health Award’ in 2007. Noel is on numerous National and State Committees including the current Chair of the Royal Australasian College of Physician’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Expert Advisory Group. He has increased Indigenous access to mainstream general practice at Inala from 12 patients in 1994, to over 4000 today. Dr Hayman is not only a qualified General Practitioner; he is also a qualified Physician. He has a Masters in Public Health and he has written eighteen publications on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. Dr Hayman has won nine health awards and is a board member of the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association in Canberra for which he was the foundation secretary. He is a committee member for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, for the Royal Australian College of Physicians and has a ministerial appointment in the Department of Health and Aging in Canberra. He has received fifteen grants for health improvement and research in Indigenous Australians. Dr Hayman also spent time working on Thursday Island in Torres Strait. His grandfather was a Wakka Wakka man, who was taken away from his family probably around 1914 and put on Purga Mission which is just outside Ipswich. His grandmother was Kalkadoon born up near Cloncurry, Mount Isa way and she was on Purga Mission too. Dr Hayman IS closing the gap. He has improved control of diabetes, improved immunisation rates, is training doctors in Indigenous health and also recruiting Indigenous doctors. He aims for a Centre of Excellence in Indigenous Health Care at Inala, QLD.
Paediatric Plenary – Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta
Aga Khan University, Karachi Pakistan
Professor Zulfiqar A. Bhutta is Husein Laljee Dewraj Professor and the Founding Chair of the Division of Women and Child Health, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. He was designated a Distinguished National Professor of the Government of Pakistan in 2007. He is also the Dean of the Faculty of Paediatrics of the College of Physicians & Surgeons, Pakistan and the Chairman of the National Research Ethics Committee of the Government of Pakistan. Professor Bhutta trained in Pakistan, UK, USA and Sweden. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh), the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (London) and the American Academy of Pediatrics. He heads a large research team working on issues of maternal, newborn and child survival and nutrition. His group has a special interest in research synthesis, scaling up evidence based interventions in community settings and health systems research. Professor Bhutta has served as a member of the Global Advisory Committee for Health Research for the World Health Organization, the Board of Child & Health and Nutrition Initiative and the steering committees of the International Zinc and Vitamin A Nutrition Consultative Groups. He is an executive committee member of the International Paediatric Association and on the Board of the Global Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. He is the immediate past-President of the Commonwealth Association of Paediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition and the Federation of Asia-Oceania Perinatal Societies. Professor Bhutta is on several international editorial advisory boards including the Lancet, BMJ, PLoS Medicine, PLoS ONE and the Cochrane ARI group. He has published four books, 55 book chapters, and over 340 indexed publications to date. He has received a number of national and international awards, including the inaugural award in 2009 by the Program for Global Pediatric Research for outstanding contributions to Global Child Health and Research.
PRSANZ Plenary – Professor Jonathon Carapetis
Menzies School of Health Research, Darwin Australia
Professor Carapetis is Director of the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, Australia’s pre-eminent Indigenous health research institute. He is a paediatrician, infectious diseases and public health physician, with particular interests in rheumatic fever, vaccines and vaccine preventable diseases, and health of children in Indigenous communities and developing countries. Professor Carapetis is also Chairman of the World Heart Federation Scientific Council on Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease and was a member of the Territory 2030 Steering Committee, developing a 20 year strategic plan for the Northern Territory. Since returning to the NT to lead Menzies in 2006, he has broadened his research interests beyond infectious diseases to focus particularly on education, early childhood and health hardware as some of the critical determinants of Aboriginal health and wellbeing.
Howard Williams Oration – Professor John Boulton
University of Newcastle, New South Wales Australia
John arrived in Perth from Scotland in 1970 with an expectant wife, a few dollars, and unlimited optimism. After post-grad experience in the Children’s Hospitals of Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide, he was appointed the Foundation Professor of Paediatrics at the Newcastle Medical School in 1980. John’s career commitment over four decades in Paediatrics has been on the amelioration of illness in the socially disadvantaged through Community and Aboriginal Child Health; Medical Education; health service development in Newcastle, Western Sydney, and the Kimberley; the clinical science of Endocrinology; and population health research into the childhood antecedents of future disease. In the Kimberley he has developed a sustainable model for remote Indigenous Child Health, formally linked to community health research and capacity-building, and as a vehicle for social justice and reconciliation through partnerships with Indigenous organisations informed by anthropological perspectives and lessons from the history of the region. He holds honorary professorial titles at Newcastle and Sydney Universities.
Public Health Plenary – Professor Lars Gemzoe (Denmark)
Consultant and Associate Partner at Gehl Architects
Lars is a Senior Consultant and Associate Partner at Gehl Architects. He has been a senior lecturer of Urban Design at the Centre for Public Space Research at the School of Architecture in Copenhagen from 1978 to 2006. Lars has over 30 years teaching and practicing architecture and place making across the world. Lars is widely considered an international authority on quality of Public Space and Public Life, having lectured at numerous Universities, Conferences and Schools of Architecture all over the world. Recently Lars has been actively consulting private developers, local authorities or NGOs in Europe, the Middle East, Australia, USA, China and India. Lars has served as a competition jury member for large scale public realm projects in Denmark. Lars is Gehl Architects representative to the Cycling Embassy of Denmark.
Ferguson-Glass Oration - Dr Tom Calma (Australia)
Aboriginal elder from the Kungarakan tribal group
Dr Calma is an Aboriginal elder from the Kungarakan tribal group and a member of the Iwaidja tribal group whose traditional lands are south west of Darwin and on the Coburg Peninsula in the Northern Territory, respectively. He has been involved in Indigenous affairs at a local, community, state, national and international level and worked in the public sector for over 35 years. Dr Calma has been appointed as National Coordinator for Tackling Indigenous Smoking to lead the fight against tobacco use in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and is Chair of the Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre. Dr Calma’s most recent previous position was that of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner within the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2004 to 2010. He also served as Race Discrimination Commissioner from 2004 until 2009. Through his 2005 Social Justice Report, Dr Calma called for the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to be closed within a generation and laid the groundwork for the Close the Gap campaign. He chaired the Close the Gap Steering Committee for Indigenous Health Equality since its inception in March 2006, and has effectively brought national attention to achieving health equality for Indigenous people. Dr Calma has broad experience in public administration, particularly in Indigenous education and employment programs from both a national policy and program perspective. He has served in roles within Australia relating to Aboriginal accommodation, community development and education, and as Senior Adviser to the Minister of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. Internationally, Dr Calma worked as a senior Australian diplomat in India and Vietnam representing Australia’s interests in education and training. In 2007 Dr Calma was named by Bulletin Magazine as the Most Influential Indigenous Person in Australia and in 2008 he received an award from GQ Magazine after being named GQ Magazine’s 2008 Man of Inspiration for his work in Indigenous Affairs. In 2010, Dr Calma was awarded an honorary doctorate from Charles Darwin University in recognition of decades of public service, particularly in relation to his work in education, training and employment in Indigenous communities. Dr Calma was recently named by Australian Doctor Magazine as one of the 50 Most Influential People in the country.
Redfern Oration – Dr Kerry Arabena (Australia)
Chief Executive, Lowitja Institute – Australia’s National Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research
Dr Kerry Arabena holds a Doctorate in Human Ecology and a Bachelor of Social Work. A mainland Torres Strait Islander currently residing in Melbourne, Dr Arabena is also currently a Director of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples Ltd. Dr Arabena has a work and academic history including a term as the administrator of one of the most remote Aboriginal Medical Services in Australia and senior appointments in government, non-government and the private sector. She has also worked across Asia and the Pacific in projects that address gender, social justice, human rights, access and equity, service provision, harm minimisation and citizenship and represented Australia in international forums on HIV/AIDS and climate change.