June and July Highlights
Prof Kathryn Backholer and Khalid Muse presented to a gathering of experts, community leaders and young people at Parliament House, to discuss the impacts of harmful product marketing on young people and potential policy solutions. This event coincided with the release of the #digitalyouth report. The report, #Digital Youth – How children and young people are targeted with harmful product marketing online, found that the ads drive engagement with harmful and addictive products.
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Congratulations to Ha Le who received the annual ADHD Australian Professional Associate (AADPA) Florence Levy Emerging Researcher Award. The Award honours Prof. Flo Levy’s outstanding clinical and research contribution to ADHD by recognising an emerging researcher or clinician-scientist in Australia who have made an outstanding contribution to the field of ADHD. In addition, Ha is a member of the research committee of AADPA, who co-led a submission to NSW Senate Inquiry: into improving access to early childhood health and development checks (submission no.39) in March 2024.
Congratulations to Ramas McRae who has received the June Opie Fellowship for his PhD studies at Deakin. The Award is designed as an incentive for students of high academic achievement who have a severe disability. It is intended for those who plan to undertake postgraduate study with a view to preparing themselves for a role in the professions, in politics, or more particularly, in university teaching and research and who have disability issues as a continuing interest. This is the first Fellowship of its kind in the world and its principal purpose is the pursuit of excellence.
Hon Richard Marles MP, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Defence, visited the Geelong Waterfront Campus to take a tour of the Nursing and Midwifery Simulation Centre. The tour was hosted by Deakin Distinguished Prof Rachel Huxley, and A/Prof Jo McDonall from the School of Nursing & Midwifery and QPS Member, led a tour of the Simulation Centre and engaged with the Deputy Prime Minister and nursing and midwifery students. One of the students took the Deputy Prime Minister’s blood pressure to mark ‘World Hypertension Day’.
Our Global Centre for Preventative Health and Nutrition (GLOBE) researchers joined a team of researchers in Tamworth this week in the first step of a long-term project aimed at improving nutrition-related health outcomes within the community. Joining researchers from the University of Newcastle’s Department of Rural Health, Tamworth Regional Council and Hunter New England and Central Coast PHN , they began the design stage of a plan aimed at better understanding the local food environment and determining how good food choices can be made easier for people.
GLOBE research fellow Dr Cindy Needham said it was exciting to bring together some of the best minds in research and preventative health to design a community model that will be genuinely helpful.
Read more https://deakin.au/46fHISh
Prof Ali Hutchinson and Prof Tracey Bucknall welcomed Prof Sam Cromie, Director of the Centre for Innovative Human Systems in Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, to the Centre for Quality and Patient Safety. Prof Cromie made a presentation to all QPS members at the Burwood Corporate Centre titled: The EQUIPS journey and an invitation to join it … or at least track it
As Director of the Centre for Innovative Human Systems https://www.tcd.ie/cihs/in Trinity College, Dublin, Prof Cromie works with a team of highly experienced and dedicated researchers, to address the real challenges faced by diverse sectors, to produce solutions that put people front and centre. He also leads the new Evidence-based QUality Improvement and Patient Safety1 (EQUIPS) https://www.tcd.ie/cihs/projects/equips.php network in Ireland. EQUIPS aims to build a strong inclusive patient-safety research community in Ireland. Prof Cromie research is focused on developing a sophisticated understanding of the application of human factors and systems principles in real operational situations across diverse sectors. It addresses multiple system outcomes including safety, wellbeing, sustainability and effectiveness. Current work includes foreign object retention, culpability decision making in just culture contexts, effective learning from patient safety incidents, design of models of care, driver monitoring in rail and road and promoting sustainable travel mode selection.
The Co-Directors at QPS are taking the opportunity of Prof Cromie’s prolonged sabbatical in Melbourne to engage in discussions and explore potential collaboration with his Centre in Ireland.
Prof Ali Hutchinson and Prof Tracey Bucknall welcomed Dr. Rista Fauzyningtyas and A/Prof Inge Dhamanti, Head PUI- PT Center of Excellence for Patient Safety and Quality Faculty of Public Health, Universitas Airlangga – Surabaya, Indonesia, the first NGO focusing in patient safety and quality in Indonesia. Discussions were had on potential opportunities to explore and expand collaboration and learn about strategies for building collaboration with stakeholders in patient safety.
GLOBE welcomes new members Emmanuel Bonsu, Kripi Khanna, Petrina Leersen, Najma Moumin and Jessica Rose.
- Emmanuel Bonsu began his PhD in June. His thesis is exploring socio-cultural determinants of overweight and obesity in Ghanaian adolescents. He will be working with Colin Bell and Steve Allender and will be based at the Burwood campus.
- With over 20 years of experience in the corporate, health industry, and public health sectors, Kripi Khanna specializes in designing robust wellbeing strategies and programs. As a research fellow, she manages the CREATE study and contributes to significant projects such as the Value Co-creation in Public Health Toolkit and the Effectiveness Outcomes of Local Government Actions in Food Environments. Kripi’s PhD research focuses on catalysing health and environmental sustainability within policy frameworks for public food procurement.
- Petrina Leersen is a PhD student working with Jenn Browne. Her academic background is in social work and public health. Petrina is currently based in Cairns but has been studying, working, and living all across North and Far North Queensland, including working closely with remote Aboriginal communities. These experiences have led her interest and passion for collaborative research that advocates for social justice and promotes Indigenous health equity. Her current research focusses on the commercial determinants of Indigenous health.
- Najma Moumin is a registered nutritionist with expertise in public health nutrition. She completed a Masters in Public Health from Simon Fraser University (Canada) in 2016 and, in March 2023 was awarded a PhD in Medicine from the University of Adelaide. Najma’s research is primarily focused on caregiver feeding practices and early-life nutrition, particularly micronutrient requirements. She will be working with Serene Yoong’s team.
- Jessica Rose is a PhD student focusing on food retail policies for children in low and middle-income countries and will be working with Erica Reeve and Kath Backholer. She has a Bachelor of Health Science and studied at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. Jessica ran a SME while pursuing an MBA, raised 4 children and then undertook a Masters in Human Nutrition, which paved the way for her current research. She is passionate about family, health, nutrition, and disease prevention, and is excited to be undertaking health research with GLOBE in an area that means so much to her.
Recent Conference Presentations
Tony LaMontagne, Professor of Work, Health & Wellbeing, was an invited speaker at the 18-20 June Psychological Health & Safety Conference in Syndey (https://psychhealthandsafetyconference.com/speakers/).
In addition to speaking as dinner panellist (photo), he reported that he “was honoured to have a special plenary session dedicated to “10 years of the integrated approach to workplace mental health.” The integrated approach to workplace mental health is a conceptual framework for intervention that he authored with several collaborators in 2014, two of whom presented in the plenary session with LaMontagne: Dr. Kathryn Page, a former post-doctoral fellow with LaMontagne at Deakin, and Professor Angela Martin from the Menzies Institute at U Tasmania, a long-time collaborator. The integrated approach has been widely adapted in policy and practice, including as the basis of the National Mental Health Commission’s National Workplace Initiative, Beyond Blue guidance on workplace mental health for police and emergency services and healthcare workers, and more.
At the recent Psych Health & Safety Conference, various case studies of uptake and application of the integrated approach in private businesses were presented, for examples from Rio Tinto (58,000 employees worldwide) and Aurizon (Australia’s largest rail freight operator). LaMontagne hopes that it might gain further traction and prominence following the featuring of the integrated approach as best practice in a commissioned 2023 paper in The Lancet on “work-related causes of mental health conditions and intervention for their improvement in workplaces.” The Lancet paper involved world leaders in the field from Europe, the UK, Japan, and Australia (LaMontagne). “The integrated approach is a powerful Deakin example of translation of research to policy & practice in an area of growing prominence,” LaMontagne said. He is now engaged with Page and Martin in gathering private business examples of adaptation of the integrated approach to document this story as a knowledge translation case study. “It has been profoundly gratifying to see this idea help people in workplaces to cut through the complexity of workplace mental health, and point them in the direction of positive change,” said LaMontagne.
