speakers

We are delighted to announce the following experts (plus many more) will be joining us as invited speakers:

Trisha Broadbridge
2006 Young Australian of the Year
Reach Foundation

Trisha Broadbridge is one of The Reach Foundation’s original ‘Crew’ (young leaders), and since 2000 has been facilitating and inspiring groups of teenagers in activity based, educational programs, helping them to improve overall levels of self-esteem. She specialises in leading workshops and that give teenagers a place where they can connect with others and be heard.

Trisha’s first experience of Reach was in 1998 at Balwyn High School when Jim Stynes, one of the founders of Reach, ran a workshop.
“I left school in Year 10 because I was struggling a bit in the school system,” she says.

After leaving high school Trisha went on to complete an AFL Traineeship, before being employed by Melbourne Football Club as an events assistant.

By 2001 she was ready to hit the books again and completed her VCE at the Council of Adult Education. In 2004, she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology and English from Latrobe University.
“During all this, I worked a huge number of hours at Reach and really enjoyed the opportunity of helping
young people,” says Trisha.

After losing her husband, Troy Broadbridge, in the 2004 Asian Tsunami, Trisha joined forces with The Reach Foundation to establish the Reach Broadbridge Fund, which she now manages on a part-time basis.

She has, with the help of the Melbourne Football club, established The Broadbridge Education Centre on Thailand's Phi Phi Island. This centre assists young people affected by the tsunami, allowing them to continue to learn after such devastation. The Reach Broadbridge Fund also raises money to take Reach's youth programs to South Australia (Troy's home state).

Trisha officially launched her book, Beyond the Wave – A Tsunami Survivor’s Story on November 9 2005 at The Reach Dream Factory.

“Something that I've always lived by - and Troy lived by, too - is that no matter what happens you have got to keep going. Troy always believed that you could turn a negative into a positive,” Trisha says

"That's what keeps me going and it’s stuff that Troy would really want me to commit to."

In 2006, Australia celebrated Trisha’s achievements and contribution by awarding her Young Australian of the Year.

Professor Mike Daube
Professor of Health Policy at Curtin University and
Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute of Western Australia.

Before moving to Curtin in January 2005 he was Director General of Health for Western Australia and Chair of the Australian National Public Health Partnership. He has played a leading role in public health, health policy and health advocacy in Australia, the UK and internationally since 1973. He has been a consultant and adviser over many years for WHO, UICC, Bloomberg Philanthropies and governments and NGOs in some 30 countries, as well as an author or co-author of many major reports. He is a regular commentator in the media on health issues.

Professor Daube is currently Deputy Chair of the Federal Government’s Preventative Health Taskforce, President of the Public Health Association of Australia, the Australian Council on Smoking and Health, and the WA Heart Foundation, Chair of the WA Alcohol and Drug Authority, and a member of many editorial boards and committees including the NHMRC Public Health Research Review Advisory Committee.

He has received awards for his work from organizations including WHO, the Australian Medical Association, the National Heart Foundation, the Public Health Association of Australia, Healthway, ACOSH, Curtin University and the Australian Red Cross.

Penny Hawe
Professor, Markin Chair in Health and Society
AHFMR Health Scientist
University of Calgary, Canada

Penny Hawe is Professor and Markin Chair in Health and Society at the University of Calgary, Canada. She took up this position in 2000, having been recruited from the University of Sydney. Penny holds a Health Scientist award from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. 

Penny is the director of the Population Health Intervention Research Centre, a centre for research development in population health funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). This is the hub for a program of work in complex interventions in population and the base for the International Collaboration on Complex Interventions, which involves a network of investigators in Canada, Australia, USA and the UK. The focus of the work is on theory, methods, ethics and economics of complex interventions. Penny’s main projects are in school and community-based interventions to promote health.

Penny is a member of the Institute Advisory Board for the CIHR Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH). IPPH is one of thirteen virtual institutes of CIHR responsible for research development in specific areas e.g., nutrition, cancer, infection, gender and health, Aboriginal people’s health and six other areas. In her IPPH role, Penny is co-chair of the Population Health Intervention Research Initiative for Canada (PHIRIC).  This is a pan-Canadian collaboration of research funding agencies, policy makers,  practice agencies and researchers. It is a ten-year initiative to build capacity in population health intervention research - its quantity, quality and use by policy-decision makers and practitioners.

Mick Gooda
Chief Executive Officer
Co-operative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health

Rob Moodie
Chair, National Preventative Health Task Force

Rob Moodie is Professor of Global Health at the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne.  Between 1998 and 2007 he was the CEO of VicHealth. He is the chair of the National Preventative Health Task Force.

Since 1979 he has worked for Save the Children Fund, Medicins Sans Frontieres, Congress, the Aboriginal Health Service in Alice Springs, the Burnet Institute and for the World Health Organization, and the joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

In 2007-2008 he chaired the audit of the Victorian Government’s major planning blueprint for Melbourne, Melbourne 2030.

Rob chairs the Technical Panel to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s HIV prevention program in India. He also chairs the Melbourne Storm Rugby League Club.

He writes regularly in the media and is co-editor/author of four books, including Hands on Health Promotion. His most recent book currently writing a book called Recipes for a Great Life with Gabriel Gate.

Dr Temo K Waqanivalu
Nutrition and Physical Activity Officer, Noncommunicable Disease Unit
WHO South Pacific Office

Currently the Nutrition and Physical Activity Officer in the Noncommunicable Disease  (NCD) Unit of the WHO South Pacific Office in Suva, Fiji which technically covers all the Pacific Island countries. From 1994 after graduation from medical school he has been working in the Ministry of Health of the Fiji Islands and has progressed through the ranks of Public Health and last held the post of National Advisor NCD before moving to WHO in December 2005. He has also held part-time lecturer positions at the Fiji School of Medicine.

In the current position he is responsible for public health support and advice to the Pacific Island Countries in the areas of NCD (mainly Diet, Physical Activity and Alcohol), Health Promotion and Mental Health.