Immunisation For Health And Life

Speaker: Dr Rodney Pearce AM

Dr Rodney Pearce AM is a country and city GP and Medical Officer of Health for the Eastern Health Authority (HA), Adelaide. Dr Pearce became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) on Australia Day 2012. He received the award for his long-standing service to medicine as a General Practitioner, through contributions to national medical organisations and to education. He is the current Chair of the Immunisation Coalition.

Speaker: Associate Professor Holly Seale

Associate Professor Holly Seale is a Social Scientist at the School of Population Health, University of New South Wales. With 17 years of research experience, her work focuses on understanding the factors influencing engagement with public health interventions in Australia and globally. She holds a PhD in epidemiology and has a background in biomedical science, specializing in population health issues such as immunization uptake, infection prevention strategies, and pandemic planning. She has published over 250 journal papers and has previously worked with NSW Health and World Health Organization.

Speaker: Prof Paul Griffin

An Infectious Diseases Physician and Clinical Microbiologist, Professor Paul Griffin was appointed as the Director of Infectious Diseases at Mater Health Services in 2013, and most recently, to his conjoint role as Head of the Mater Clinical Unit for the University of Queensland School of Medicine. 

Paul is an accomplished clinical trial investigator, having fulfilled the role of Principal Investigator in over 150 clinical trials, particularly in Infectious Diseases including 8 COVID-19 vaccines. 

Despite an already demanding role at the Mater, Paul continues as a member of the AMA Queensland Council 2023-2024, and as board member and scientific advisory board member of the Immunisation Coalition, with active interest in vaccine education and advocacy, becoming a trusted media authority and spokesperson across the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaker: Professor Steven Faux AM

Professor Steven Faux AM was the establishing Director of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine in 2000 and is the current director of Pain Medicine at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. He is a Conjoint Professor of Medicine at the University of NSW and the University of Notre Dame. 

Professor Faux has established the first and longest continuous telehealth pain management service in Australia in 2008, has published research into online pain management tools and is the co-lead of one of Australia’s first long COVID clinics. 

He is the current President of the Rehabilitation Medicine Society of Australia and New Zealand.  He has published over 100 articles in peer reviewed journals and has recently published a book for consumers and healthcare workers on managing long COVID using evidence based treatments.

Speaker: Angela Newbound

Angela Newbound is an Immunisation Education Consultant based in South Australia, and is a member of the Immunisation Coalition. 

She has been involved in immunisation program delivery in South Australia for over 24 years, originally as an immunisation provider and in program coordinator roles within the Divisions of General Practice, SA Health Immunisation Section, the Medicare Local Network and presently the Primary Health Network. 

Angela provides clinical advice, support and education to a wide range of immunisation providers across South Australia and contributes to the development of immunisation resources to assist providers with challenging aspects of the immunisation program.

Speaker: Professor Stephen R. Graves

Stephen R. Graves is a medical microbiologist and Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA). He is a former Chair of the RCPA Faculty of Science. Twenty-five years ago, he established the Australian Rickettsial Reference Laboratory (ARRL) as a boutique, not-for-profit microbiology diagnostic and research laboratory, located at University Hospital Geelong, Victoria. He is the Approved Pathology Provider (APP) for this laboratory, which specializes in diagnosing infections transmitted by ectoparasites such as ticks, lice, fleas, and mites. In Australia, these infections are mainly rickettsial and Q fever (Coxiella burnetii). He was involved in the discovery of Flinders Island Spotted Fever (Rickettsia honei) and has had a new rickettsia, found in the kangaroo tick (Amblyomma triguttatum), named after him (Rickettsia gravesii). He is involved in the development of new vaccines against Q fever, for use in goats and humans.

Speaker: Dr Nusrat Homaira & Dr Brad McKay

Dr Nusrat Homaira

Dr Homaira is a medically trained paediatric respiratory epidemiologist with almost two decades of working experience in prevention and control of respiratory syncytial viral (RSV) disease in low, middle- and high-income settings . She currently works as a Senior Lecturer, Discipline of Paediatrics and Child Health at UNSW, Sydney and a Respiratory Scientists at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick.  Dr Nusrat has been involved in multiple seminal studies estimating global burden of RSV disease in children which were critical for driving RSV prevention initiatives. She has been heavily engaged in advocacy and policy discussions around equitable access to new RSV preventive options. Dr Homaira has published almost 100 scientific papers in high impact journals including Lancet series, BMJ and Thorax. Her research has attracted 10 million AUD in grant funding. Currently she is leading a large study investigating the in-hospital complications in children with severe RSV disease across two large paediatric hospitals in New South Wales, Australia.

Dr Brad McKay

Dr Brad McKay is a General Practitioner, author, TV host, podcaster, media commentator, and artist. He hosted ‘Embarrassing Bodies Down Under’, guest-hosted ABC’s flagship science show ‘Catalyst’, and Hachette Australia published his book “Fake Medicine: Exposing the wellness crazes, cons, and quacks costing us our health” in 2021. He is dedicated to public health and science communication, presents health segments on “The Today Show” (Channel 9) and has fortnightly health segments on ABC Radio.

Speaker: Moderator: Dr Sneha Wadhwani

Dr Sneha Wadhwani is a credentialled and practicing GP specialising in womens health who emigrated from the UK in 2015. She co-founded Evoca women’s health , a national network of women’s health GP clinics under the ForHealth umbrella, which launched in December 2022, and now holds 35 clinics nationally with  over 100 women’s health GPs, nurses and allied health providers in this space. Sneha leads the Evoca network of clinics and practitioners as the National Clinical Director. Sneha is additionally a regional clinical director overseeing clinical governance, clinical service delivery and integrated and multidisciplinary care across the 30 ForHealth medical centres in NSW and ACT. She is also the Head of GP wellbeing coordinating and delivering an GP wellbeing program and managing and supporting GPs in or at risk of burnout. She is a conjoint lecturer with UNSW medical school and a GP registrar supervisor, and also supervised IMG GPs on the fellowship pathway. Sneha has also co-developed and created her own podcast series called “Everything from A to V” which aims to debunk common myths in women’s health.

Speaker: Moderator: Dr Rodney Pearce AM

Dr Rodney Pearce AM

Dr Rodney Pearce AM is a country and city GP and Medical Officer of Health for the Eastern Health Authority (HA), Adelaide. 

Dr Pearce became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) on Australia Day 2012. He received the award for his long-standing service to medicine as a General Practitioner, through contributions to national medical organisations and to education. 

He is the current Chair of the Immunisation Coalition.

Speaker: Dr Rodney Pearce AM

Dr Rodney Pearce AM is a country and city GP and Medical Officer of Health for the Eastern Health Authority (HA), Adelaide. Dr Pearce became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) on Australia Day 2012. He received the award for his long-standing service to medicine as a General Practitioner, through contributions to national medical organisations and to education. He is the current Chair of the Immunisation Coalition.