Keynote Presenters
Stephanie Alexander
Stephanie Alexander is a well-known cook, restaurateur, food writer and champion of the quality and diversity of Australian food. Opening her first restaurant in 1964, Alexander was best known for Stephanie’s restaurant in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. As a champion of the small producer, she set new standards of service and went on to write a number of books including the well-known The Cook’s Companion.
Alexander has always believed that despite the surface interest in “fancy food” and restaurants, we are raising children and young adults with little understanding of what to do with fresh food in their daily lives. She believes that the earlier children learn about food through example and positive experiences, the better their food choices will be through life. This preoccupation led her to develop a comprehensive gardening and cooking program – the kitchen garden program, piloted at Collingwood College in Melbourne, which is still going strongly after seven years.
Alexander’s mix of practical skills, creative ability, relentless energy, and “gift of the gab” led to the development of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation which provides children from Years 3 to 6 to a minimum of 40 minutes a week in an extensive vegetable garden which they have helped design, build and maintain on their school grounds along with 90 minutes a week in a home style kitchen where they cook their harvested produce and sit together to enjoy what they have cooked. There are currently 27 established Kitchen Garden schools across Victoria, and a further 22 who have joined the program in 2009. The national roll out of the kitchen garden program is underway, reaching up to 190 primary schools throughout Australia over the next four years.
Professor Rob Carter
Professor Rob Carter currently holds the inaugural Chair in Health Economics at Deakin University and is Director of Deakin Health Economics. Previously he occupied senior appointments in health economics at The University of Melbourne, at Monash University and at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
Rob is widely recognised for his expertise in economic appraisal, both nationally and internationally. In Australia, for example, he was appointed by the Federal health minister to serve on a range of key government committees, such as the Pharmaceuticals Benefits Advisory Committee and the Australian Screening Advisory Committee; and by the Victorian health minister to serve on the Victorian Policy Advisory Committee on Technology. In recent years Rob has focused his research in the area of priority setting and health promotion. In 2005 he received the University of Melbourne School of Population Health Open Award for Excellence in Research Achievement. Rob also remains active in the areas of health technology assessment and pharmacoeconomics.
Rob has published extensively (with over 200 publications in the area of economic appraisal) and has a strong NHMRC track record (including multiple project grants, two capacity building grants, a strategic grant in health economics and a health services research grant).
Dr Lance Emerson
Dr Lance Emerson is the CEO of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY).
Lance has a background in primary health care and quality improvement, with a focus on 'joined-
up' solutions to applying best evidence in addressing health inequities. He has worked in senior
Government positions at both the State and Federal level, as a private consultant, as executive of
a national member based health organisation, and has been appointed to numerous Ministerial
committees and working groups. His passion and focus is on progressing collaborative evidence
based action to improve the health and wellbeing of young Australians.
Ella Greene-Moton
Ella Greene-Moton has an extensive background in community organizing and advocacy that spans over the past forty years in the Flint area. Her commitment to the empowerment of community residents reaches across local, state, national, and international levels. She currently serves as a Community Education Coordinator at the Center of Public Health and Community Genomics at the School of Public Health – University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. She also serves as the National Community-Based Organization Network (NCBON) Program Coordinator, as well as staff support for the Policy Work Group Community-Based Public Health (CBPH) Caucus of APHA.
Ella is a Past Chair of the Community Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) Board of Directors, a Past Chair of the Community-Based Public Health Caucus of APHA; Past Chair of the APHA Action Board; Past Co-Chair of the APHA Joint Policy Committee (JPC); Past Ex-Officio member of the APHA Executive Board; and a Past Chair of the National Community Committee of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Prevention Research Centers Program.
Ella served as Assistant Director for seven of her ten year period of employment with Flint Odyssey House, Inc., Health awareness Center, a community-based organization in Flint Michigan. She also served as an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Michigan Flint Campus from 2000-2003 as well as a Co-Instructor at the Michigan Public Health Training Center. In addition, her skills and experience as an Independent Community-Academic Consultant continues to provide guidance and support for academic institutions and the communities that they serve in partnership development, capacity building, and sustainability.
Nerida Joss
Nerida Joss is Research Fellow at the Department of Health Social Science, Monash University. For nearly ten years, Nerida has worked in the health promotion field in the academic, community and government sectors. At present she is contracted as the National Health Promotion Adviser at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
Currently Nerida is also completing a PhD. Her research explores the drivers of collaborative practice in health promotion. Her study focusses on the alignment of partnership policy with collaborative practice and identifies the skills needed by practitioners to improve collaborative outcomes. She is using the Primary Care Partneship Strategy to highlight this phenonemon.
Nerida’s other research intrests include mental health promotion, health promotion workforce development and the establishment of joint appointment roles between universities and organisations to bridge the gap between health promotion research and practice.
In the past Nerida has been a committee member of the Australian Health Promotion Association Victorian Branch including a role as Treasurer.
Cr Geoff Lake
- President Australian Local Government Association (since November 2008)
- Councillor City of Monash, Victoria (since March 2000)
- Board Member Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB), Victoria (since June 2005)
- President, Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) (2004 – 2006)
- Mayor, City of Monash (2002 – 2004)
Geoff is a lawyer at the Melbourne offices of Minter Ellison Lawyers.
He was first elected as a councillor in the City of Monash in Melbourne's south-east in 2000 and became the youngest ever mayor in Victoria in 2002 at the age of 22.
Geoff was elected President of the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) in November 2008. He is a past president of the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV).
Among his duties as President of ALGA, Geoff represents the 562 councils across Australia on the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) alongside the Prime Minister and state and territory leaders.
Geoff is also a board member of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) in Melbourne.
Mary Ann O’Loughlin
Ms Mary Ann O’Loughlin is Executive Councillor and Head of the Secretariat of the COAG Reform Council. She is also currently a member of the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission established by the Prime Minister and Minister for Health and Ageing.
Between 2000 and 2008, Ms O’Loughlin was a Director of the Allen Consulting Group, a leading economics and public policy consulting firm. Before joining Allen Consulting, she was Senior Adviser (Social Policy) to the then Prime Minister, the Hon Paul Keating, and held a number of senior positions in the Commonwealth Public Service, including Deputy Secretary of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, and First Assistant Secretary, Social Policy, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Ms O’Loughlin has also worked as a senior executive for a major publicly listed health care company.
Eberhard Wenzel Oration
Associate Professor Liz Eckermann
Associate Professor Liz Eckermann (M.A., Ph.D) has recently been Interim Head of the School of History Heritage and Society at Deakin University, Associate Head of School (Research and Research Mentoring) and Associate Dean: Research in the Faculty of Arts. Her key areas of research interest and publication cover, women’s health, reproductive health, gender and health, domestic violence, quality of life and indicators of health status, health promotion and public health.
Liz is on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies where she is has been Vice-President: Development. She was made a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Society in 2006 and in 2007 won the Zonta International Outstanding Achievement Award for her commitment to the advancement of women. She has undertaken over 20 consultancies on health promotion and gender and health for the World Health Organization in Geneva and the Western Pacific Region.
She is currently conducting research and publishing on risk and reproductive health in Lao PDR, preparing the background documents for WHO, WPRO on women and health for the Regional Committee Meeting in September and finishing a book on international perspectives on gender, lifespan and quality of life which is to be published by Springer.
Liz was a great friend of Eberhard , sharing his deep interest in social justice and public health issues. She misses the many hours spent in long and often heated debates with him on the role of the body in social theory, politics, philosophy and just about every other topic in Eberhard’s huge repertoire of knowledge and expertise. She is truly honoured to be asked to present this oration in memory of such a erudite, and committed public health researcher and activist who continues to have a significant impact on public health debates worldwide.
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