This event highlights Prof. Cripps’ key achievements and sheds light on the advancements in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of pneumococcal disease.
Our expert panel discussed pneumococcal disease, vaccine development, and the impact of vaccines on disease reduction in both adults and children. They also discussed the different serotypes and their effects across age groups, provided insights into invasive pneumococcal disease, immunisation recommendations, and compared polysaccharide and conjugate vaccine types.
The panel reviewed some valent options and the future pneumococcal immunisation program for reducing disease burden. Additionally, strategies to increase immunisation rates among older adults and high-risk groups were covered.
Dr Anita Muñoz (Chair)
MBBS (Hons), FRACGP, Grad Cert Clin Teach, MPH, GAICD
Anita worked as a Clinical Editor and Clinical Advisor for 6 years with North Western Melbourne PHN through which a passion for health system improvement, innovation, sustainability, and equity emerged. She sees general practice as the key to a rational health system that produces better outcomes for patients and practitioners alike. Anita Muñoz is a GP in private practice in Melbourne’s CBD and has a dedication to evidence-based medicine, lifelong learning, and promoting the role of general practice in the health of patients, communities and in public health more broadly.
Anita has held advisory positions with Better Care Victoria and Safer Care Victoria and has been a medical educator for over 9 years. She is particularly preoccupied with the wellbeing and experience of general practice registrars, and of securing a high-quality general practice workforce for the future.
A/Prof Michael Woodward AM
Associate Professor Michael Woodward is Head of Aged Care Research at Austin Health in Melbourne, Victoria. He is a specialist in geriatric medicine with a major interest in adult vaccination and also Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, wound management and the quality use of medications in older people. He is head of the Medical and Cognitive Research Unit that conducts trials into new vaccines and other new therapies for conditions such as dementia and influenza.
Associate Professor Woodward’s publication record includes over 130 peer-reviewed research and review articles. As chair of the Geriatric Therapeutics section of the editorial board of the Journal of Pharmacy Practice and Research he oversaw nearly 20 years of publications on quality use of medications and health promotion activities in older people, including articles on vaccination. He was also joint editor of Wound Practice and Research, the journal of the Australian Wound Management Association, of which he is a past President. He is a member of the editorial committee of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs MATES program, which improves prescribing and pharmaceutical care of DVA beneficiaries, including vaccination.
His work in geriatric medicine, dementia and other research and his extensive authorship has been honoured with Membership of the Order of Australia, awarded on Australia Day 2016.
Prof Paul van Buynder
Prof Paul Van Buynder is a Public Health Physician and past Chairman of the Immunisation Coalition. He is a professor in the School of Medicine at Griffith University in Queensland. He has held senior public health positions in a number of Australian states, in two Canadian jurisdictions and at the Centre for Infections in the UK. He has held personal appointments on sub-committees of National Immunisation Technical Advisory Committees in three continents. Paul is a reviewer of over 10 journals and has over 80 referred book chapters and articles.
Dr Phoebe Williams
BSc BCom MBBS(Hons.) MSc DCH DPhil (Oxon.) FRACP
Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney
Phoebe is a paediatrician, infectious diseases physician, and a senior lecturer within the school of public health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney, Australia. She works as a clinician at The Sydney Children's Hospital Network and within the policy group of the National Centre for Immunisation and Research Surveillance [NCIRS], as part of the policy support team for ATAGI. Phoebe completed her DPhil [PhD] as a Nuffield Department of Medicine scholar with the University of Oxford, undertaking a clinical trial for neonates with sepsis in rural Kenya, within the Oxford Tropical Medicine network in Kilifi, Kenya. Phoebe is an NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellow whose research is focused on antimicrobial resistance in children, particularly within resource-constrained settings in Southeast Asia. She leads the neonatal sepsis in Southeast Asia and the Pacific (NeoSEAP) consortium, and is appointed as an advisor to the World Health Organization’s Paediatric Antibiotic Development Program (PADO) and Research Agenda into AMR on Human Health.
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