WCIM 2010 Melbourne in conjunction with Physicians Week

20 – 25 March 2010
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre Melbourne, Australia
World Medicine for the Next Decade: 2010 to 2020

Keynote Speakers

We are delighted to announce the following Confirmed Speakers on the program. Please click on the links for each speaker to view their biography and synopses.

WCIM Keynote Plenary Speakers

• The Governor of Victoria, Professor David de Kretser AC - Biography

  Professor David de Kretser, AC Governor of Victoria
  
  Professor de Kretser was the founding Director of the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development from 1991-2005, and a Professor of Anatomy of the Faculty of Medicine of Monash University since 1978. He was also Associate Dean for Biotechnology Development in the Faculty from 2002 to 2006. In 2003, he was named a Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor. In 2000, with support form the Federal Government, Professor de Kretser initiated a highly successful program of community and professional education in male reproductive health called Andrology Australia.
  
  Professor de Kretser’s research into reproductive biology, infertility and endocrinology has seen over 600 papers featured in national and international peer reviewed journals, with many being presented at international meetings. Professor de Kretser has made important contributions to our understanding of how sperm and testosterone are produced and how these processes can be disturbed in infertile men. His laboratory also pioneered a program of research that resulted in the isolation of novel proteins that, in addition to controlling reproductive processes appear to have key roles in modulating the inflammatory response.
  
  He has served on various boards, including the Human Reproduction Program at World Health Organisation and the Executive Council of the International Society of Andrology. Professor de Kretser is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
  
  He was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2006, and received the Centenary Medal in 2003.
  
  Professor de Kretser assumed office as the 28th Governor of Victoria on April 7th, 2006.
  
  

• The Victorian Minister for Health, The Hon. Daniel Andrews MP
• Nobel Laureate Professor Barry Marshall AC FRACP - Biography

  Professor Barry Marshall AC, together with Professor Robin Warren, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2005. The award recognised their 1982 discovery that a bacterium, helicobacter pylori, causes one of the most common and important diseases of mankind, peptic ulcer disease. In 2007 Professor Marshall was awarded the honours of Western Australian of the Year and the Companion of the Order of Australia.
  

  
  
• Professor Peter Deutschmann - Biography

  Peter Deutschmann is associate director of the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne and executive director of its affiliate, the Australian International Health Institute.  Peter, a surgeon who subsequently trained in public health whilst working in rural north India, has over twenty five years experience in international health. He has special interests in the integration and delivery of essential services through a primary health care approach in resource poor settings, including those services related to disease prevention and health promotion.

  Peter has considerable experience in the planning and implementation of population based health programs in many countries of the Asia Pacific, especially India, Nepal, Burma, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and East Timor, for government and international agencies that include the Australian Agency for International Development, UK Department for International Development, UN agencies and the World Bank.

  Peter is committed to development assistance that supports health programs based on principles of social justice and equitable access to health services. To this end he remains a strong advocate for the equipping of health professionals in the Asia Pacific region including those from Australia who seek to contribute to the further development of countries of this region. He holds an adjunct appointment of Professor and teaches and supervises students and health professionals enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Melbourne.

• Professor Rolf Streuli - Biography

  Professor Rolf A. Streuli, M.D. FACP, FRCP had been a Past President of the International Society of Internal Medicine.  He is currently a Professor of Medicine, University of Zurich School of Medicine and Head, Task Force Advance, Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products, Bern, Switzerland.  He is a Colonel in the Military Health Service of the Swiss Army. 

  Professor Streuli has previously held the following key positions and appointments:

  • 1980 - 1985                Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich Hospitals,                           Department of Medicine
  • 1986 - 2009                Head, Department of Medicine, SRO-Hospital, 4900                                    Langenthal, Switzerland
  • 2004 - 2009                Medical Director, SRO-Hospitals

  Professor Streuli has held or currently holds the following positions:

  • 1992 – 2000                Member of the editorial board of the Swiss Medical Weekly
  • 2000 –                         Member of the editorial board of Swiss Medical Forum
  • 1986 –                         Reviewer for Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift
  • 1986 – 2009               Member, Governing Board of the SRO-Hospital Langenthal

  Professor Streuli holds membership in a number of societies and committees, and also speaks a number of languages.  He also has published over 100 publications.

  
  

• Professor Will Steffen - Biography

  Professor Will Steffen is Executive Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, and is also Science Adviser, Department of Climate Change, Australian Government. From 1998 to mid-2004, he served as Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, based in Stockholm, Sweden. His research interests span a broad range within the field of Earth System science, with an emphasis on incorporation of human processes in Earth System modelling and analysis; and on sustainability, climate change and the Earth System.
  

  
  
• Senator Dr Bob Brown - Biography

  Bob Brown was elected to the Senate in 1996, after 10 years as an MHA in Tasmania's state parliament.

  In his first speech in the Senate, Bob raised the threat posed by climate change. Government and opposition members laughed at his warning of sea level rises and it has taken 10 years for them to finally begin to acknowledge the causes and effects of climate change.

  Since 1996, Bob has continued to take a courageous, and often politically lonely, stand on issues across the national and international spectrum.

  Some of the many issues that Bob has raised in the Senate include petrol sniffing in Central Australia, self-determination for West Papua and Tibet, saving Tasmania’s ancient forests, opposing the war in Iraq, justice for David Hicks, stopping the sale of the Snowy Hydro scheme and opposing the dumping of nuclear waste in Australia.

  Bob was re-elected to the Senate in 2001. Following the election of 4 Greens senators in 2004, Bob became parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens in 2005.

  The 2007 election saw Bob re-elected to the Senate for a third term along with two new Greens Senators in WA and SA. Bob received the highest personal Senate vote in Tasmania and was elected with more than a quota in his own right.

  
  

  
  
• Professor Ian Gilmore - Biography

  Professor Ian Gilmore is the President of the Royal College of Physicians.  He is a Consultant Physician and Gastroenterologist at the Royal Liverpool University Hospitals and Honorary Professor at the Department of Medicine, University of Liverpool.  His specialty interest is liver disease.

  Professor Gilmore was previously Registrar of the College and a member of Council.  He chaired a Working Party in 2001, producing the report Alcohol – can the NHS afford it?  A blueprint for a coherent alcohol strategy.  Professor Gilmore continues to chair the Alcohol Committee and now also chairs the Alcohol Health Alliance in which relevant agencies work together in a coherent and focussed framework.  He is Chair of the European Alcohol and Health Forum Science Group and is a member of the Climate and Health Council.

  He is currently a Commissioner for Sir Michael Marmot’s review of the social determinants of health in this country and a member of the National Quality Board.  He has lectured extensively overseas and has had particularly fruitful clinical and research collaborations with American colleagues.  He continues to undertake some clinical work.

  Professor Gilmore is married with three children.

  
  

  
  

RACP Named Orations or Lectures

• Professor Ian Reid FRAP will deliver the Priscilla Kincaid-Smith Oration titled "The Calcium Controversy: Balancing Heart and Bone Effects of Supplements"
• Professor Rebecca Mason will deliver the Cottrell Lecture titled "Vitamin D: the dilemma of skin and bone"
• Dame Carol Black will deliver the Ferguson-Glass Oration titled "Maximising the Health and Wellbeing of the Working Population" (AFOEM) - Biography
  
  

  Professor Dame Carol Black is the National Director for Health and Work, Chairman of the Nuffield Trust, President of the British Lung Foundation, and Pro-Chancellor at the University of Bristol.  She is the immediate past-President of the Royal College of Physicians, and has just stepped down as Chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.    The Centre she established at the Royal Free Hospital, London is the major centre in Europe for clinical care and research on fibrosing connective tissue diseases in particular Systemic Sclerosis and is internationally renowned.

  Since the early-1990s she has worked at board level in a number of organisations, including the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal Free Hospital Hampstead NHS Trust, the Health Foundation, the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, the Imperial College Healthcare Charity. She has recently served as Chairman of the UK Health Honours Committee, and is now on the Main Committee for the Queen’s Awards for Voluntary Service.   She is also a member of many national committees aiming to improve healthcare. She is a Foreign Affiliate of the Institute of Medicine USA, and has been awarded many honorary degrees and fellowships.

• Professor Richard Jones FRACP FAFRM will deliver the Burniston Oration titled "George Garrett Burniston - the man, the mission and the memory" (AFRM) - Biography
  
  

  Professor Richard Frederick Jones FRACP FAFRM
  
  Richard Jones is one of the pioneers of Rehabilitation Medicine in NSW. He commenced his residency at Prince Henry Hospital, NSW where Professor George Burniston was just establishing the first Australian Department of Rehabilitation Medicine in a major teaching hospital. He undertook specialty training in the UK, obtaining Fellowships of the Royal Colleges of Surgery of both Edinburgh and England, with a special emphasis on Prosthetic and Spinal Cord Injury Management. His extensive research interest into the Management of Spinal Cord Injury led to his appointment as Associate Professor, and Chairman of the UNSW Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. He has served on a large number of Committees and Boards, most importantly, perhaps with the Paraplegic and Quadriplegic Association (ParaQuad), the Australian Council of Rehabilitation of the Disabled (ACROD) and NSW, Australian and International organizations for Sports for the Disabled. He was Team Leader (and Medical Officer) for the Australian team to the Olympiad for the Physically Handicapped (the forerunner of the Paralympics) in Holland in 1980.
  
  For many years, in recognition of his association with George Burniston, Richard has ably introduced the Burniston Oration and now he has accepted the invitation to present the George Burniston Oration for 2010.

• Dr Natasha Lannin PhD will deliver the Norington Lecture titled "Different Strokes: Physical therapies for neuro conditions" (AFRM) - Biography

  Dr Natasha Lannin is an Occupational Therapist and Senior Researcher at the Rehabilitation Studies Unit, Sydney Medical School, The University of Sydney. She also manages the Australian Stroke Clinical Register (AuSCR). Dr Lannin’s research focuses on stroke rehabilitation and improved strategies for reducing the impact and incidence of contracture and loss of dexterity after brain impairment.

  
  
  
  
• Professor Richard Smith will deliver the Redfern Oration titled "Challenges Confronting Australasian Health" (AFPHM)

Paediatrics and Child Health

• Dr Russell Viner will deliver the Paediatrics & Child Health Keynote Plenary titled "Adolescent health - the new Paediatrics?" - Biography
  
  

  Russell M Viner MBBS FRACP FRCPCH FRCP (Lon) PhD (Cantab)
  
  Russell Viner is an academic paediatrician (currently Reader in Adolescent Health) and adolescent physician at the UCL Institute of Child Health in London, working clinically at University College Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London.
  
  • He set up the first Adolescent Medicine Service in the UK jointly between Great Ormond St Hospital for Children and University College London Hospitals, and works clinically in adolescent diabetes, obesity and complex adolescent problems.
  • He works as a consultant on adolescent health for the Departments of Health and of Education in the UK, and for the WHO internationally.
  • His research interests focus on the implications of adolescent development for physical and mental health in adolescence, particularly around obesity, health risk behaviours (alcohol, smoking and drug use) and health services for young people. Most recently he has become involved in international efforts to improve global adolescent health
  • He has over £5million in personal grant income in the last 5 years, with over 100 peer-reviewed publications, many in high impact journals. Collaborations extend around the UK, to the USA, Europe and Australia.
  • He is Secretary of the Academic Board and Council Members of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
  • He is a Board Member of the UK Association for Young People’s Health and the International Association of Adolescent Health.

• Professor Don Roberton will deliver the Howard Williams Oration titled "Immunisation in Childhood: evidence based healthcare" - Biography
  
  

  Don Roberton graduated from the University of Otago in 1971. He trained in paediatrics in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. He has practised as a general paediatrician, paediatric immunologist and paediatric rheumatologist.

  He was McGregor Reid Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Adelaide from 1989 to 2006. Currently he is Pro Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences, and Dean, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

  In the past he has been President of the Paediatric Research Society of Australia, Chair of the Board of Censors, Paediatrics & Child Health Division, RACP, and President of the Paediatrics & Child Health Division.

  He has coedited 4 editions of the textbook Practical Paediatrics. His research interests have been in paediatric immunodeficiency disorders, paediatric rheumatology, vaccine development, and medical education.

• Professor Keith Grimwood will deliver the PRSANZ Plenary titled “Rotavirus vaccines: from one generation to the next!” - Biography
  
  

  Professor Keith Grimwood is Director of the Queensland Children’s Medical Research Institute at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. Previously he has worked in New Zealand, Melbourne and Calgary. His research interests include rotavirus gastroenteritis, the microbiology of cystic fibrosis lung disease and respiratory viruses.