2021 Choosing Wisely Australia National Meeting - Virtual event - 19 May

Hamish Macdonald comes from Jindabyne in country NSW. He began his media career in regional radio and television before embarking on an international broadcasting career, first with UK's Channel 4 News, then Al-Jazeera English, before joining America’s ABC as International Affairs Correspondent.

In Australia, Hamish is the host of Q+A on ABC TV. In addition, he regularly reports for Foreign Correspondent and appears on The Project on Network Ten. He has won a Walkley award for current affairs journalism and was named Young Journalist of the Year by Britain's Royal Television Society in 2008. In 2016 he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University; he now sits on the Walkley’s Judging Board.

Hamish has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine, the nuclear disaster in Japan, uprisings in Hong Kong and Egypt, the London bombings, and the rise of ISIS. He recently hosted the ABC’s coverage of Australia’s bushfire crisis on location in the affected areas.

Tara Montgomery is founder of Civic Health Partners, an independent consulting practice that works with purpose-driven health organizations to bring consumer and citizen perspectives to conversations about culture change and improve their public engagement strategies. She helps health and health technology leaders around the world to reflect on the intersection of empathy and evidence, coaching them through the development of ethical approaches to build public trust. She is currently researching the role of trust in the US leadership response to COVID-19.

Tara previously led Health Impact at the US nonprofit publishing and advocacy organization Consumer Reports, where she developed strategies for protecting the health, safety, privacy, and pocketbooks of consumers, and advocated for increasing the transparency and accountability of corporate and government entities. She also launched the US consumer campaign for Choosing Wisely in partnership with the ABIM Foundation.

Tara is an Adjunct Lecturer in Health Communication at Tufts University School of Medicine. She is a regular speaker at influential forums on consumer insights, health tech, ethics, and communications. Her work has appeared in JAMA, BMJ Opinion, and the AMA Journal of Ethics podcast. She has served as Co-chair of the Ethics and Compliance Advisory Board for PatientsLikeMe and as a member of the Scientific Board of the Preventing Overdiagnosis collaboration. She is currently a public member on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Medical Specialties, where she also serves on the Ethics and Professionalism Committee.

Alex Broom is Professor of Sociology at the School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Sydney. He is recognised as an international leader in sociology, with a specific interest in health. This has included a focus on the social, cultural and political dimensions of cancer and palliative care, and more recently, infectious diseases.

His work takes a person-centred approach, qualitatively exploring the complex intersections of individual experience and social/political context. He leads a team of social science researchers at The University of Sydney, and his recent books include Dying: A Social Perspective on the End of Life (Routledge, 2015), Bodies and Suffering: Emotions and Relations of Care  (Routledge 2017, with Ana Dragojlovic), and, Survivorship: A Sociology of Cancer in Everyday Life (Routledge, 2021 with Katie Kenny).

He works on translational research with a wide range of clinical researchers, policy makers and end-user organisations, with a focus on how to utilise novel social science understandings to bring about change, where needed, for those governing, providing and receiving care across a range of settings and contexts (e.g. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 2019; American Journal of Infection Control, 2018; Journal of Hospital Infection, 2018; BMJ Global Health, 2020; Clinical Cancer Research, 2020).

Professor Kirsten McCaffery, BSc Hons Psych, PhD Psych, FAHMS is a Principal Research Fellow at the Sydney School of Public Health, the University of Sydney and currently holds an NHMRC Principal Research Fellowship. She has a national and international reputation in shared decision making, health literacy and the assessment of psychosocial outcomes, and has had four successive NHMRC fellowships. She is Director of Research at the Sydney School of Public Health and Director of the Sydney Health Literacy Lab, a group of over 20 researchers and students at the School of Public Health. She is co-founder of Wiser Healthcare – a research collaboration of over 100 researchers across four Australian institutions (Universities of Sydney, Bond, Wollongong and Monash) and Node Leader of the Charles Perkins Centre, Health Literacy Node. Her research focuses on psychosocial aspects of overdiagnosis and overtesting, health communication among disadvantaged populations and behaviour change research. Since April 2020 she has expanded her work to include infectious disease, COVID-19 health communication particularly for low health literacy and culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Her work uses quantitative methods such as randomised trials and experimental studies as well as qualitative research. Professor McCaffery has received over AU$42 million in competitive research funding since 2000 and has over 295 publications including papers published in the highest ranked general medical journals including Lancet, BMJ, JAMA and MJA.

Julie Leask is professor in the Susan Wakil School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney and visiting professorial fellow at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance. Her research focuses on behavioural science in public health, specifically vaccination uptake, programs and policy. She has a range of advisory roles with WHO: as chair of the working group on Measuring Behavioural and Social Drivers of Vaccination; member of the Immunization and Vaccines related Implementation Research advisory committee; the South East Asia Regional Immunization Technical Advisory Group; and previously, the Tailoring Immunization Programme Advisory Group of Experts for the WHO European Office. She is member of the Expert Advisory Group for Australia’s Regional (COVID-19) Vaccine Access and Health Security Initiative. She was winner of the Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence in 2019.

Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite, BA, MIR (Hons), MBA, DipLR, PhD, FIML, FCHSM, FFPHRCP (UK), FAcSS (UK), Hon FRACMA, FAHMS is Founding Director of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Director of the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science, and Professor of Health Systems Research, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He has appointments at six other universities internationally, and he is a board member and President of the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua) and consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO). His research examines the changing nature of health systems, which has attracted funding of more than AUD $145 million. He is particularly interested in health care as a complex adaptive system and applying complexity science to health care problems.

Professor Braithwaite has contributed over 640 refereed publications and has presented at international and national conferences on more than 1,020 occasions, including over 110 keynote addresses. His research appears in journals such as The BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet, Social Science & Medicine, BMJ Quality & Safety, and the International Journal for Quality in Health Care. He has received over 50 different national and international awards for his teaching and research.

Leanne has held executive positions in federal government and non-government organisations. Leanne is the Chief Executive Officer of the Consumers Health Forum of Australia and previously served as CEO of national peak and local service delivery organisations in the primary care sector.

She is a health advocate and service executive with over thirty years’ experience in health and social policy, program and service development. Leanne has broad governance experience and is currently Board Director of Coordinare (South East New South Wales’ Primary Health Network), the Ozhelp Foundation, and the Australian Pharmacy Council, Independent Chair of Coordinare’s Community Advisory Committee and Chair of the ACSQHC’s Patient Advisory Group.

She has several advisory appointments including the Commonwealth’s Primary Health Care Advisory Group, the National Preventative Strategy Advisory Committee and the OECD PaRIS Patient Advisory Panel. Leanne has tertiary qualifications in communications and business. She is a member of both the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian Institute of Management.

Dr Bauke Hovinga (MD, FACEM), is the Associate Clinical Director of the Mackay Base Hospital Emergency Department, Mackay Hospital and Health Service (MHHS). Bauke has practiced medicine in hospitals and Emergency Departments across Australia, developing a keen interest in the prevention of low value care and the promotion of the right patient, right test, right time ethos. Alongside his Mackay FACEM and Assoc. Clinical Director duties, Bauke serves as a Medical Retrieval Consultant for CareFlight in the remote Northern Territory and as Major (Medical Officer) in the 3^rd Health support Battalion of the Australian Army – a role for which he was deployed to Iraq as part of the task group Taji VIII in 2019. Bauke has worked closely with the MHHS Institute of Research and Innovation, taking on the role of Choosing Wisely Clinical Lead and leading the charge on the floor as MHHS became a Choosing Wisely Champion Health Service. Bauke has been instrumental in the progress of Choosing Wisely projects locally and has a passion for the education and advocacy of the movement amongst his peers and junior clinicians.

Dr Coralie Wales leads consumers through co-design methodologies to co-produce systems that are inclusive, collectively intelligent and highly functional. She facilitates large diverse groups towards consensus on important issues, for inclusive decision making. She facilitates Citizen Juries which deliberate on important issues in the national discourse. Her PhD examined the experiences of clinicians providing treatment with people in chronic pain, highlighting the importance of the relationship in the encounter and the potential for clinician burnout when there is a collision between practitioner and system values. She formed Chronic Pain Australia, “the Voice” for people living with chronic pain, in 2006, remaining until 2018 as its voluntary president and facilitator of the annual National Pain Week across Australia. Her work for NSW Health from 2010 to 2014 in a rural setting explored mHealth and telehealth technologies with people living with cancer, and older people living with chronic disease. In her current role since 2014 she has co-designed with Western Sydney community members a system of partnership with the public health system. Relationships of trust, openness and knowledge enable the Community and Consumer Partnerships program in Western Sydney to thrive.

Dr Danielle Muscat, B.Psych. [Hons Class 1], PhD, FHEA, is a founding member and Westmead Lead of the Sydney Health Literacy Lab. She currently holds a highly-competitive Westmead Fellowship (Early Career Researcher) funded by Western Sydney Local Health District (WSLHD). Dr Muscat’s PhD research involved the development and evaluation of the world’s first combined health literacy and shared decision-making training program for adults with lower literacy, implemented across TAFE NSW. Since 2018, Dr Muscat has been instrumental in establishing the WSLHD Health Literacy Hub (a locality-based research, development and capacity-building hub including >1000 WSLHD staff) and leading a program of research in Western Sydney. Dr Muscat’s strong international profile in health literacy is demonstrated by her appointment in 2019 as an Advisor on Health Literacy to the World Health Organization.

Dr David Farlow is the Executive Director of Research & Innovation for Mackay Hospital and Health Service and Associate Professor/Clinical Dean James Cook University Clinical School Mackay. David first arrived in the Mackay HHS in 1984 with a passion for rural and remote medicine. He was a rural generalist for 25 years with credentialing in procedural Obstetrics, Anaesthetics and Surgery. He was also the Medical Superintendent and Executive Officer of the Whitsunday Health Service. David then moved to the role of Executive Director Clinical Services for Mackay Hospital and Health Service from 2007-2015. He then moved into a joint role between MHHS [Research/Innovation/Medical Workforce] and James Cook University [Clinical Dean Mackay School]. A successful business case resulted in the MHHS board allocating him $3m to develop a Research and Innovation Institute that aligns to digital health optimisation and translational science/research. In addition to his medical qualifications, David also developed a self-publishing company and is the editor and co-author of a children’s first aid book “Freya The First Aider”. He is foremost a family man who enjoys fishing and golfing.

Dipti Zachariah is the State-wide and Specialist Programs Team Leader (Multicultural Health Services), Integrated and Community Health Directorate at Western Sydney Local Health District. Within this role, Dipti provides leadership and support to a number of initiatives and programs including the NSW Education Program on FGM/C, Multicultural Women’s Health, DV prevention programs, Maternity Liaison Officer positions across the district, the Bilingual Community Education Program and CALD Youth Programs. She works on partnerships with state-wide, internal and external clinical and non-clinical teams, and community partners. Dipti manages a team of Multicultural Health staff delivering these initiatives and personally delivers cultural competency and leadership training for clinical staff across the district. Dipti is an emerging thought leader and community development professional with experience in multicultural health and population health in the public health sector and learning & development in the private sector. Dipti has held several managerial roles and has led teams and influenced stakeholders and developed a love and passion for empowering culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities for better health outcomes and service quality by bringing her wider experience in cross-cultural workplace training, community development, CALD experience and the private sector ethos

Dr Geoff Couser is a senior staff specialist in emergency medicine at the Royal Hobart Hospital, and is the clinical lead for Choosing Wisely in Tasmania. He has been Head of Discipline for Emergency Medicine at the University of Tasmania and has worked as a Retrieval Consultant for Ambulance Tasmania. He is also passionate about the environment and land conservation and through this has been a board member and the President of the Tasmanian Land Conservancy (www.tasland.org.au). He lives in Hobart.

Nola Ries is a Professor with the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney and a researcher with the Faculty’s Law Health Justice Research Centre. She teaches and conducts research in health law and currently leads an Avant Foundation-funded project on the medico-legal aspects of low value care. She led an international review of research on doctors’ views and experiences of defensive medicine (published in Health Policy, 2021) and undertook interviews with clinicians and consumers to understand their perspectives on defensive practice.

Nola is a cross-disciplinary researcher with postgraduate qualifications in law, public administration and behavioural science. She has been awarded research funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Association of Gerontology, the NSW Government and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She has also held an Australian Fellowship in Health Services & Policy Research. Nola publishes widely in legal, health and policy journals, with over 60 peer-reviewed articles and approximately 45 book chapters, major reports, commissioned papers and other publications. Nola is qualified as a lawyer in Canada and Australia.

Simon is a GP and medical educator based in Newcastle, NSW. He has worked in the medical education sphere for over two decades and is passionate about high quality education and training.

Simon has worked in clinical and educational roles in both NSW and the NT, as well as in the Republic of Ireland. He has published over 60 peer reviewed journal articles, and in 2018 received the RACGP Corliss award for his contribution to medical education.

Simon has particular interests in GP supervisor professional development and the rational use of tests and medicines. He is a member of the Choosing Wisely Advisory Group and a proud member of Doctors for the Environment. He spends his spare time cycling, writing travel stories and pretending that he is a musician in an all-GP band, the Euthymics.