Committees

Sujata Allan FRACGP DCH is a GP currently working in an Aboriginal Medical Centre in rural NSW. She completed The Change Agency’s community organising fellowship in 2016, and is passionate about building a powerful climate and health movement. She loves seeing people becoming empowered to take action on climate change, and would like to see many more health people become involved and seeing it as a core health issue. In her spare time she plays the banjo and fiddle in a band.

Katherine Barraclough MBBS(Hons), FRACP, PhD is a Melbourne based nephrologist. She is interested in both the intersection of human and environmental health and the delivery of environmentally sustainable healthcare. She completed the Green Steps Sustainability Leadership program through the Monash Sustainability Development Institute in 2014 and the Centre for Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Program in 2015. She has worked with DEA and within her own medical speciality for many years to increase awareness of the fundamental interdependence of humans and nature and to address the major environmental challenges facing us. She is most happy and peaceful when she is in nature

Marion Carey MPH FAFPHM FRSPH is a public health physician with a special interest in environmental health and experience in health program and policy development and research. She currently works as a medical editor. Previously she worked in public health for state governments in NSW, WA and Victoria, including responses to the 2009 Melbourne heatwave and the Black Saturday bushfires, and developing Victorian government climate change and health policy. She was a VicHealth Research Fellow and Adjunct Assoc Prof (Research) at Monash University and is now Adjunct Assoc Prof at the School of Medicine, University of Notre Dame, Sydney. She is a Fellow of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine, the Royal Society for Public Health (UK), and the Public Health Association of Australia. Marion finds inspiration in the wild places of the earth and in working to promote “healthy planet, healthy people”.

Beau Frigault is an intern with Gold Coast Health and in his 5th year as a member of DEA. He is the outgoing Queensland student state representative and was the convener of iDEA16 in Brisbane. Prior to this, he was a member of several environmental awareness groups in Canada (where he is from) and completed a Sustainability Leadership Certificate from Ithaca College in New York. Having been an environmental advocate for quite some time, he particularly enjoys educating and engaging young people in sustainability issues and tackling the health care industry's contribution to carbon emissions locally and nationally.

John Van Der Kallen FRACP is a Rheumatologist in Newcastle. John grew up in Sydney and graduated from the University of NSW. He spent time training in many rural areas of NSW as well as completing his rheumatology training in Leiden in the Netherlands where it was obvious that the community is healthier without being dependent on cars. He has lived in the Hunter for over 18 years and has seen the Hunter Valley change dramatically with the increase in coal mining. He previously set up the Fracture Liaison Service in the Hunter New England Area Health Service but is now focused on the impacts of climate change on our health. John believes that one of the solutions to climate change is for all of us to reduce our individual emissions to zero or below. Consequently, his wife Jane and himself have a timber plantation, solar panels at home and at work and commute on their bikes as much as possible.

Kristof Wing MBBS BMedSci(Hons) is a physician trainee in Darwin who has previously worked in Tasmania and Timor-Leste. He is concerned about the pivotal impact our changing climate is having on food security and the potential for altered communicable disease epidemiology. Having recently moved to the Top End he is currently exploring the impact that dispossession of nature through environmental degradation is having on indigenous and non-indigenous patients alike.

Georgia is a postgraduate medical student with a passion for global & planetary health.

Georgia has led various student groups at a university and national level, and represented the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations at United Nations climate change negotiations.

Georgia has published work with the Lancet Countdown on Climate Change & Health and the Lancet Planetary Health, and contributed to a textbook chapter on climate change in medical education.

Liz Bashford FANZCA MPH Int believes that climate change is the biggest challenge we face today through its impacts on human health and natural ecosystems. Political and social will is urgently needed to implement available solutions that include renewable energy and regenerative agriculture. She lives on a farm in rural Victoria

Ben Ewald B. Med, PhD is a GP in suburban Newcastle and taught epidemiology at the University of Newcastle for many years. His research interests are in how the environment influences health, both through urban design effects on physical activity and through air pollution. He previously worked on Aboriginal health in Central Australia where the social and environmental determinants of health are blindingly obvious. When not bushwalking he will be mucking around in a statistics package, or learning GIS.

Arnagretta Hunter MPH FRACP is a physician and cardiologist practicing in Canberra and regional NSW. She works at The Canberra Hospital and in private practice, and is a Senior Lecturer at ANU Medical School. She has particular interest in public policy and its effect on health, preventative cardiology and the synergies between improving human health and addressing climate change. She is the Chair of the ACT Branch of DEA.

John Iser FRACP is a retired Melbourne-based gastroenterologist and as well regularly conducted consulting sessions in country centres. He now spends his time between the city, the surf coast and the bush. He has been interested in the environment for most of his lifetime and has decried the exploitation by government and business for short-term gains. Having been raised in regional Victoria, he has been particularly concerned at the effects of climate change on rural productivity and sustainability. He is inspired to work with DEA because the burden faced by his grandchildren will become insurmountable without stronger environmental protection.

David King MPH, FRACGP is an academic general practitioner with the University of Queensland. He has been active as a committee member of DEA since 2003, but interested in environmental advocacy and activism for many decades prior to that. He is keen to educate his colleagues and the public about the risks and benefits of caring for our environment and living sustainably. He also aims to ‘walk the talk’ – being active in bushcare projects, cycle commuting and living sustainably.

Kristen Pearson FRACP is a Geriatrician based in Melbourne, working clinically as well as in Quality and Clinical Risk management. She views environmental issues as strongly related to both risk management and health outcomes. She is a member of the Environment committee at her health service. She has been involved with DEA for several years and sees DEA as a trusted source of information and advocacy.

Helen Redmond FAFRM is a rehabilitation physician working full time in clinical practice in Sydney, who has a lifelong passion for protecting the environment. A member of DEA since 2006, she has been active in unconventional gas, coal and climate change advocacy and is currently championing fossil fuel divestment as a short cut through political paralysis on climate and energy policy.

Dimity Williams MBBS(Hons) FRACGP is a General Practitioner. She has been the Biodiversity Convenor for Doctors for the Environment Australia since 2013. She has overseen the development of DEA's Biodiversity Policy and communications on this topic and spoken in various forums about the ways in which the diversity and health of living things is essential for our wellbeing. Prior to this role she was on the National Management Committee and Victorian Secretary. Dimity is also a Co-Founder of the Kids in Nature Network which seeks to reconnect children to nature. Their signature event, Nature Play Week runs each April and highlights the many great things happening in the nature connection space for children.

From 1949 to 1965 Professor Stephen Boyden AM carried out research in bacteriology and immunology in Cambridge (UK), New York, Paris, Copenhagen and Canberra. From 1965 to his retirement at the end of 1990 he pioneered work at the Australian National University on human ecology and biohistory. He has published nine books on these themes. Since retirement he has been involved in the establishment and activities of the Nature and Society Forum (now called the Frank Fenner Foundation), which is a community-based organization committed to improving understanding, across the community, of the processes of life and human and ecological health. He is at present Patron of the Foundation. His latest book, The story of life and the future of humanity, is in the press.

Christopher Burrell AO is Emeritus Professor of Virology at the University of Adelaide. His research expertise lies in hepatitis viruses particularly hepatitis B; HIV and AIDS; influenza; virus diagnosis and pathogenesis; immunization and prevention of virus infections. For more than forty years he has taught medical undergraduates and graduates and doctoral students. He has also worked extensively with government research funding bodies including the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Australian Centre for Hepatitis and HIV (ACH2), and has been active in public health bodies dealing with blood-borne infections. He was formerly Head of the Infectious Diseases Laboratories, Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science, Adelaide, providing a virus diagnostic and reference laboratory service to the state of South Australia.

Colin Butler is an honorary professor of public health at the Australian National University, with special expertise in climate change and health, limits to growth and health, and “planetary overload". He co-founded the NGO BODHI Australia (1989) and is a founding board member of DEA and founding co-chair of Health-Earth. He edited “Climate Change and Global Health” (CABI, 2014) with a second edition anticipated in 2021. He is a former Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and has contributed to many international scientific reports, including the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the Global Environmental Outlook and the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Professor Peter Doherty AC, FRS, FAA is Laureate Professor of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne, Michael F. Tamer Chair of Biomedical Research at St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and Nobel Laureate for Physiology or Medicine. He received the Nobel Prize in 1996 and was Australian of the Year in 1997. Recognising the importance of the issue, Professor Doherty has written on aspects of climate change in his popular books (Melbourne University Publishing) “A Light History of Hot Air”, “Sentinel Chickens: what birds tell us about our health and the world” and “The Knowledge Wars”. He gives many public talks on the need to engage with evidence based reality in everything from his own research area of infectious disease to global warming.

Professor Michael Kidd AM is a general practitioner and Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University. He is a past president of The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the current president of the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and a member of the Council of the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Professor David de Kretser AC, FAA is a reproductive endocrinologist whose academic career at Monash University has included appointments as Professor of Anatomy, the founding Director of the Monash Institute of Medical Research and the Associate Dean for Biotechnology Development. In 2003, he was named a Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor. He served as the 28th Governor of Victoria from 2006 to 2011 and is a companion of the Order of Australia. He resumed his research career at Monash University in April 2011. He has served on the Human Reproduction Program at the World Health Organisation. David has expressed dismay at the state of the climate change debate and supports efforts to provide people with clear and factual information on its impact and ways of addressing it.

Stephen Leeder AO is a Professor Emeritus of public health and community medicine at the University of Sydney. He is currently Chair of the Western Sydney Local Health District Board, and Director, Research Network, Western Sydney Local Health District. He has a long history of involvement in public health research, educational development and policy. His research interests as a clinical epidemiologist have been mainly asthma and cardiovascular disease. His interest in public health was stimulated by spending 1968 in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. In 2003-04, Professor Leeder worked at Columbia University, New York, in the Earth Institute and Mailman School of Public Health, developing a substantial report, based on research data and scientific interpretation, of the economic consequences of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in developing economies. The report, A Race against Time: the challenge of cardiovascular disease in developing economies , concentrated upon the macroeconomic consequences of CVD, and especially on the fact that one-third of CVD deaths in many developing countries were occurring among people of working age. In recent years, Professor Leeder has directed the development of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy, a collaborative centre between The Australian National University and the University of Sydney.

Professor Ian Lowe AO is emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University in Brisbane and holds adjunct appointments at three other universities. His research concerns the influence of policy decisions on use of science and technology, especially in the fields of energy and environment. He directed Australia’s Commission for the Future in 1988 and chaired the advisory council that produced the first national report on the state of the environment in 1996. He was named Australian Humanist of the Year in 1988. In 2000 he received the Queensland Premier’s Millennium Award for Excellence in Science and the Australian Prime Minster’s Environmental Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement. He chairs Brisbane’s Urban Environment Advisory Committee and is a member of the national Environmental Health Council. He has written a weekly column for New Scientist since 1992 and received the 2002 Eureka Prize for Promotion of Science.

Professor Robyn McDermott is a public health physician who has worked as a clinician, health service manager and epidemiologist in rural Australia, South East Asia and the Pacific. She has served as President of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine in 2002-04 and as Pro Vice Chancellor of the Division of Health Sciences at the University of South Australia from 2004-9. She has undertaken consultancies with WHO, World Bank, AusAID and State and Commonwealth Departments of Health in the areas of primary health care, chronic disease prevention and management. Her research interests are in the determinants of health in disadvantaged and Indigenous populations, health system improvement and sustainability.

Professor Lidia Morawska is a Professor at the Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane and the Director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (ILAQH) at QUT, which is a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization on Research and Training in the field of Air Quality and Health. She is a co-director of the Australia-China Centre for Air Quality Science and Management. She conducts fundamental and applied research in the interdisciplinary field of air quality and its impact on human health and the environment, with a specific focus on science of airborne particulate matter (ultrafine and nanoparticles). Professor Morawska is a physicist and received her doctorate at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland for research on radon and its progeny. She is an author of over four hundred and fifty journal papers, book chapters and refereed conference papers. She has also been involved at the executive level with a number of relevant national and international professional bodies and has been acting as an advisor to the World Health Organization. She is a past President of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate.

Professor Peter Newman AO is the Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University. He has written 16 books and over 300 papers. His books include ‘The End of Automobile Dependence’ (2015), ‘Green Urbanism in Asia’ (2013) and ‘Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence’ which was launched in the White House in 1999. Peter was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Virginia Charlottesville and was on the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report. In 2014 he was awarded an Order of Australia for his contributions to urban design and sustainable transport. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological and Engineering Sciences Australia. Peter has worked in local government as an elected councillor, in state government as an advisor to three Premiers and in the Australian Government on the Board of Infrastructure Australia.

Sir Gustav Nossal AC, CBE, FAA, FRS was Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (1965-1996) and Professor of Medical Biology at The University of Melbourne. His research is in fundamental immunology with five books and 530 scientific articles in this and related fields. He has been President (1986-1989) of the International Union of Immunological Societies; President of the Australian Academy of Science (1994-1998); a member of the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council (1989 to 1998); and Chairman of the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (1987-1996).He has also served as Chairman of the committee overseeing the World Health Organization’s Vaccines and Biologicals Program (1993-2002) and Chairman of the Strategic Advisory Council of the Bill and Melinda Gates Children’s Vaccine Program (1998-2003). He was knighted in 1977, made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1989 appointed Australian of the Year in 2000, and received the Centenary Medal for distinguished service to the study of antibody formation and immunological tolerance in 2001. The Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne and the Nossal High School at Monash University are both named in his honour. Other honours include Fellow of The Royal Society of London, Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, Member of the Academie des Sciences, France, the Robert Koch Gold Medal, the Albert Einstein World Award of Science, the Emil von Behring Prize, the Rabbi Shai Shacknai Prize, Monash University Lifetime Achievement Award and over 120 named lectureships in ten countries.

Aside from his day job, Professor Hugh Possingham FAA has a variety of broader public roles advising policy makers and managers by sitting on 11 committees and boards outside the University including: The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (founding member), Founding Editor of Conservation Letters (an international scientific journal), Queensland Rhodes Scholars selection committee and several Environmental NGO scientific advisory committees. He and Dr Barry Traill wrote “The Brigalow Declaration”, used by Premier Beattie to stop land clearing in Queensland thereby stopping 10% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and saving an area the size of Portugal from conversion into farmland. The Possingham lab developed the most widely used conservation planning software in the world. Hugh coauthored two scientific consensus statements that supported Australia’s new marine reserve system, that is a quarter the size of Europe. He is an advocate of wise decision-making and an informal advisor to several governments. He currently directs two research centres.

Professor Lawrie Powell AC is currently Director of Research at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and Professor Emeritus, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He has made significant contributions to the understanding of inherited liver disease and cirrhosis especially haemochromatosis. In 1990 Professor Powell was appointed Director of The Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR). Professor Powell was instrumental in the successful development and planning of the new Comprehensive Cancer Research Centre at QIMR and the UQCCR on the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital site which was opened in 2008. Professor Powell has received numerous national and international awards in recognition of his research contributions including a Gold Medal from the Canadian Liver Foundation “for outstanding life time contributions to hepatology” and the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 1990. He was elected President of the International Association for the Study of the Liver (1986 to 1988) and elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1990. In 1991 he was awarded the Marcel Simon Prize by the Société Francaise de Hémochromatose in recognition of scientific achievements in the field of genetic iron overload diseases. Professor Powell was awarded Alumnus of the Year for 1999 by The University of Queensland, the Premier’s Millennium Award for Excellence in Health for 2000, named a “Queensland Great” in the Premier’s awards 2002, and awarded a Centenary Medal by the Commonwealth of Australia, 2003. His most recent accolade was the 2008 Distinguished Achievement Award by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, the only Australian and only the third person outside North America to have received this award.

Fiona Stanley AC is the founding Director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research that was established in Perth in 1990. The Institute is multidisciplinary and researches the prevention of major childhood illnesses. Her particular interests are in strategies to enhance health and well-being in populations; the causes and prevention of birth defects and major neurological disorders: the causes and lifelong consequences of low birth weight; patterns of maternal and child health in Aboriginal and Caucasian populations. She is also the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth, a national organisation with an agenda to improve the health and well-being of young Australians. In 2003 Fiona Stanley was made Australian of the Year for her contribution to child health.

Dr Rosemary Stanton OAM is a nutritionist whose work over the last 50 years has involved public health nutrition, education and consumer issues relating to nutrition. She is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Medical Sciences at the University of New South Wales, and is involved with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology (Sydney) in their international work on sustainable use of resources in food production. As well as many peer-reviewed scientific papers, Rosemary has authored over 30 books on food and nutrition, including several textbooks, and writes on nutrition for both the public and the medical profession. She was also a member of the NHMRC’s committee that developed the most recent dietary guidelines and infant feeding guidelines. Her current interests focus on the interrelationships between healthy diets and environmental factors and she is working to ensure this gains greater prominence in future dietary guidelines.

Norman Swan qualified as a paediatrician but is best known for presenting and producing ABC Radio National programs: Health Report and Life Matters and hosting the ABC television program: Health Dimensions. He has contributed to many other radio and television programs. Norman has been Australian Producer of the Year and was awarded a Gold Citation in the United Nations Media Peace Prizes for his radio work. In 1988 he won the Australian Writers’ Guild Award for best documentary – on scientific fraud. He has also won three Walkley National Awards for Australian Journalism including the Gold and Australia’s top prize for Science Journalism, the Michael Daley Award, twice. In addition to his broadcasting Norman edits his own newsletter, The Health Reader.