2022 WAHPSA Networking Brunch

Speakers:

• Professor Susan Sawyer (Royal Children’s Hospital, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and University of Melbourne): Professor Susan Sawyer AM is Director of the Centre for Adolescent at the Royal Children’s Hospital and holds the inaugural Geoff and Helen Handbury Chair of Adolescent Health within the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne. She is the immediate past president of the International Association for Adolescent Health, chair of the International Pediatric Association special advisory group on Adolescent Medicine, chair of the Australian Network of WHO Collaborating Centres, and chair of the Victorian Government’s Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer committee. Susan’s clinical, research and advocacy efforts have helped shape the field of adolescent health and medicine in Australia and internationally. She is co-director of a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Adolescent Health and over the past three years, led the academic team that developed the first global standards on health promoting schools for WHO and UNESCO.

• Shane Wilson (Principal of Marble Bar Primary School): Shane was selected as one of 12 Australian Schools Plus Teaching Fellows in July 2022 and was awarded the Commonwealth Bank Teaching Award to further Marble Bar Primary School’s STEM innovation. He is passionate about culturally responsive STEM, with Marble Bar’s Virtual Worlds being named as the winner of WA’s Innovating Government ICT Initiative of the Year. Shane will be presenting on the school’s work to date integrating Nyamal culture and language, and future opportunities to integrate health promotion.

• Sam Giddings (Transfolk of WA): Sam Gibbings is the current vice-chair at Transforlk of WA, a peer support service for trans and gender diverse people and their loved ones in WA. She will present about some of the work Transfolk of WA is engaged in.

•  Cecilia Airth (Better Health Co.): Presenting on healthy lifestyle programs for families that Better Health Co are delivering throughout WA in partnership with DoH, the Better Health Program and the Active8 program. The Better Health Program is a program that has been delivered in WA for a few years to primary aged children and their families. Cecilia will also introduce their new program, the Active8 program which is for parents of children aged 2-5 years old

• Dr Ani Wierenga (Academic Coordinator – Adolescent Health & Wellbeing, UniMelb): Dr Ani Wierenga is an Honorary Senior Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences, and the Academic Coordinator of the University’s postgrad programs run through the School of Paediatrics in the School of Medicine. She is passionate about shaping the types of futures we are creating locally and globally, for and with younger generations. She works with a broad range of actors towards developing strategies for transformative learning. Dr Ani Wierenga will be presenting on adolescent health and capacity building.
• Ash Pawlowski (Nutrition Austraia): Presenting on the new Nutrition Australia WA Whole of School Healthy Eating Program.

• Antoinett Halden & Dino Manalis (SCSA): Antoinett and/or Dino will be presenting on the new curriculum changes, how agencies can help bridge the divide between parents and communities, and where to next.

• Dr Jilen Patel (UWA Dental School): Dr Jilen Patel is a specialist paediatric dentist. He is a Senior lecturer at UWA Dental School and consultant and Perth Children’s Hospital. His research and clinical interests have been aimed at improving oral health outcomes among vulnerable cohorts and more recently has been involved in curriculum design and reform which includes the launch of the Clinics to Communities program in 2009. Dr Patel will be presenting on extending interactive, age-appropriate oral health promotion into schools and integrating this into the UWA Dental School curriculum.