Invited Speakers
INVITED SPEAKERS
The Oceania Tobacco Control Conference would like to thank the below speakers.
Lani Teddy
Lani (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi) is a Research Fellow based at Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pōmare (Eru Pōmare Māori Health Research Centre), and ASPIRE Aotearoa at the University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand. Lani is working on research projects that focus on Indigenous perspectives of tobacco and has a strong interest in how youth perceive vaping, and policies related to nicotine products.
Danny Allende
Danny Allende is a proud Aboriginal man from La Perouse who is currently leading Na Joomelah, a successful Tackling Indigenous Smoking team which services the Sydney and Illawarra Region.
Working in community for over 10 years, Danny is passionate about improving health outcomes through education and physical activity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Abby Smith
Abby has been the Director of Quit Tasmania for 9 years, leading Tasmania's tobacco control mass media campaigns, Quitline 13 7848 and other national and state-based tobacco control work. She also serves as Deputy Chair of Cancer Council’s National Tobacco Issues Committee and is a PhD candidate with the Prevention Research Collaboration, The University of Sydney. Abby’s research focuses on reducing tobacco retail availability, social marketing and promoting healthy retail environments.
Professor Lisa Wood
As a marker of her commitment to research being applied and useful, she is highly regarded for leading rapid research with timely dissemination to inform advocacy and policy reform. Lisa also champions the need for public health efforts to be sensitive to and inclusive of vulnerable population groups, where health disparities remain deeply rooted in social determinants, trauma and systemic drivers of disadvantage.
Hayley Jones
Hayley Jones is Director of the McCabe Centre for Law & Cancer, a joint initiative of Cancer Council Victoria, the Union for International Cancer Control and Cancer Council Australia. Hayley leads the McCabe Centre team based in Australia, Fiji, Kenya, New Zealand and the Philippines. Through world-leading research and training programs, the McCabe Centre empowers individuals, organisations and governments to use law to prevent cancer and other noncommunicable diseases, and to advance equitable health care for all people. Hayley is Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre of Law and Noncommunicable Disease and leads the McCabe Centre’s work as the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Knowledge Hub on Legal Challenges. Hayley is Co-Chair of the Executive Board for the Australian Network of WHO Collaborating Centres. Dual-qualified as a lawyer in Australia and England, and with a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne, Hayley’s background includes legal initiatives supporting access to justice.
Prof Tom Calma AO
Professor Tom Calma is an Aboriginal elder from the Kungarakan tribal group and a member of the Iwaidja tribal group. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2012 and named Senior Australian of the Year in 2023 for his work as a human rights and social justice advocate.
Tom has long been a champion for the improvement and advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ health, justice, education, and employment status. His call for Australia to address the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples was the catalyst for the Close the Gap Campaign.
Professor Calma currently works as a consultant, volunteer and academic and leads the Tackling Indigenous Smoking program in Australia. Tom’s research interests include tobacco control, as well as health, mental health, and suicide prevention. For many decades, he has been a fierce advocate for progress and change, and his work continues to have an enduring impact on public discourse in Australia and beyond.
Dr Mary Assunta
Mary is an international tobacco control advocate with more than 30 years of experience in policy development. She is the Head of Research and Advocacy at the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC). She is the Senior Policy Advisor to the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) an organization based in Bangkok. Mary is the lead author of the Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index which is a report card exposing the tobacco industry’s unethical conduct in countries and how governments respond to it by applying WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Article 5.3. She obtained her PhD at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney, and her research looked into internal documents of the tobacco industry. She now serves as an adjunct senior lecturer at the School of Public Health. She has published many articles in peer reviewed journals and made numerous presentations at international conferences, consultations and training workshops. She was awarded the Luther L Terry award for outstanding individual leadership.
Dr Christina Watts
Watts is a Research Fellow within the Daffodil Centre (a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW) in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney. As part of the Lung Cancer Policy and Evaluation Stream, she leads research on strategies that the tobacco and vaping industries have used to influence public policy and promote their products in the face of tobacco control regulations. Watts is a co-investigator on the Generation Vape study, a collaborative research project between Cancer Council NSW and Australian State and Federal government health departments.
Suzanne Zhou
Suzanne Zhou is the Manager for Prevention at the McCabe Centre for Law and Cancer and a lawyer with more than ten years of experience working in global health law, principally focusing on tobacco control. At the McCabe Centre, Suzanne leads a team supporting countries to adopt effective laws to prevent cancer and other non-communicable diseases, defend public health laws from legal challenge, and ensure policy coherence between health and trade and investment law, including through the McCabe Centre’s role as a WHO Collaborating Centre for Law and Noncommunicable Disease and a Knowledge Hub of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Suzanne has previously served as co-director of the Hague Academy of International Law’s 2020-2021 Centre for Studies and Research and as a researcher for the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, and is a member of World Cancer Research Fund International’s Policy Advisory Group.
Dr Emily Brennan
Emily earned her PhD in Psychology from the University of Melbourne in 2012. After her PhD, she completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked in cancer prevention research since 2006, with a particular focus on studying the ways in which public communication interventions can be used to reduce unhealthy behaviours like tobacco use and harmful levels of alcohol consumption. Emily served as a member of the team that evaluated Australia’s world first tobacco plain packaging policy. She has recently lead a series of research studies to develop and test the impact of novel warning labels and campaigns that inform people who smoke about industry manipulation of tobacco products, and to develop Health Promotion Insert messages that support and empower people who smoke to quit. Emily’s research has been funded by the NHMRC, Cancer Council Victoria and through contracts with the Australian Government.
Rhiannon Binks
Rhiannon, who is Katherine NT born and bred, is a dedicated Public Health Manager for Danila Dilba Health Service in Darwin NT.Rhiannon has over 15 years of experience working in remote Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory, particularly overseeing programs related to Tackling Indigenous Smoking, STI/BBV, ARF/RHD, and Cancer Coordination. Rhiannon is passionately committed to advocating for improved health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, focusing on culturally appropriate education and raising community awareness of health issues to drive meaningful change within the Top End region.
Daniel Morris
Daniel, whose mob is the Paakantyi people from Bourke NSW, was raised in Mount Gambier SA. Daniel worked for Pangula Mannamurna (Pangula means place where Doctor or Healer can be found and Mannamurna meaning joining hands in Bunganditj language) where he carried out his Cert 3 and 4 in Aboriginal Primary Health. He since moved to Darwin in the Top End where he now passionately works for Danila Dilba Health Service as a Tobacco Action Officer. Daniel is part of an amazing team (Tackling Indigenous Smoking) committed to providing culturally appropriate health education to the Top End mob.
Prof Vivienne Milch
Professor Vivienne Milch is Medical Director and Head, Clinical Policy Advice Branch, at Cancer Australia. She provides strategic clinical policy advice and leadership to support Cancer Australia’s work to minimise the impact of cancer, address disparities, and improve the health outcomes of people affected by cancer.Professor Milch is the medical advisor to the Australian Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care on cancer screening policy, and Chair of the Clinical Advisory Group for the BreastScreen Australia, and Chair of the Expert Advisory Committee for the National Lung Cancer Screening Program. She holds professorial appointments at the Caring Futures Institute at Flinders University and the School of Medicine at University of Notre Dame, Sydney. Prior to joining Cancer Australia, Professor Milch was a General Practitioner and clinical researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.
Rose
Moore
Roselie Moore is Director of the Governance and Engagement Section of the Lung Cancer Screening and Cancer Infrastructure Branch at the Department of Health and Aged Care. She joined the Department of Health and Aged Care in 2012. She has more than 12 years of experience in the Australian Public Service. She has vast experience across a range of service delivery, program and policy roles with a background in psychology and public health. She has a keen interest in first nations’ health and is currently leading the Department’s engagement and consultation on the development of the National Lung Cancer Screening Program.
A/Prof Nicole Rankin
A/Prof Nicole Rankin is an implementation scientist and Head, Evaluation and Implementation Science Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. Her focus is on research translation, including how interventions can be rapidly translated into clinical practice, particularly in lung cancer. Nicole is an international leader in implementation research design, conduct and evaluation. She has led or collaborated on implementation research projects in lung cancer screening, early diagnosis and multidisciplinary team management, head and neck cancer, cancer genetics anxiety and depression clinical pathways. Nicole has published more than 120 manuscripts in highly relevant health services research journals and is a chief investigator on $30.6M worth of research grants. In 2020, Nicole was awarded the Leslie J. Fleming Churchill Fellowship to explore strategies that enable people from disadvantaged communities to screen for lung cancer.
Dr Hollie Bendotti
Hollie is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UQ School of Public Health and Thoracic Research Centre. Her thesis explored the use of conversational artificial intelligence for smoking cessation. She is currently working on projects investigating the tobacco and vape retailer landscape in Queensland, and smoking cessation interventions for people undergoing lung cancer screening.
Joanne Isbel
Joanne Isbel (BA Psych, Hons, Master Clinical Psychology) is the Manager of Preventive Health for Queensland Health's Health Contact Centre. Joanne, an APSAD-endorsed Tobacco Treatment Specialist, has over 20 years of experience working as a Clinical Psychologist. Joanne supports the Quitline service to deliver evidence-based smoking and vaping cessation counselling.
A/Prof Marianne Weber
Associate Professor Weber is a cancer epidemiologist who leads the Lung Cancer Evaluation and Policy stream at the Daffodil Centre, a joint venture between the University of Sydney and Cancer Council NSW. Her research combines population-wide simulation modelling with epidemiology and behavioural research, with the objective of generating evidence to maximise effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of tobacco control policy and optimise implementation of lung cancer screening. Outputs, such as 50-year forecasts of smoking prevalence, have directly supported the national tobacco control agenda and lung cancer screening policy recommendations in Australia.
A/Prof Henry Marshall
Associate Professor Henry Marshall, FRACP PhD, is a senior staff Thoracic Physician at The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane and Visiting Medical Officer at St Vincent’s Private Hospital Northside, Brisbane. His research, at the University of Queensland Thoracic Research Centre, aims to reduce the burden of disease caused by lung cancer by focusing on lung cancer early detection, screening and smoking cessation.