(Queensland)

Matt Sanders (BA, MA Auck., DipEDPsych Auck., PhD Qld) is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of the Parenting and Family Support Centre at the University of Queensland. He is founder of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program. This internationally recognized program has twice won the National Violence Prevention Award from the Commonwealth Heads of Governments in Australia.

He conducts research in the area of parenting, family psychology and the treatment and prevention of childhood psychopathology. The Parenting and Family Support Centre is involved in conducting a number of randomised controlled trials evaluating the effects of family based interventions for children and adolescents. Current research projects focus on evaluating family interventions for children at risk for the development of severe conduct problems, children with challenging behaviour and developmental disabilities, parental maltreatment, parental depression and marital conflict.

He is author of the popular book Every Parent: A positive guide to children’s behaviour, and has published extensively on the nature, causes, prevention and treatment of behavioural disturbance in children. In 1996 he was awarded a Distinguished Career Award from the Australian Association of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. He has served as a consultant for several government departments and agencies both within Australia and internationally interested in the adoption of population-level, evidence-based parenting and family support strategies. He is also a member of the National Suicide Prevention Council.

(Victoria)

Kelsey Hegarty (MBBS, FRACGP, DipRACOG, PhD) is an Associate Professor in the Department of General Practice at the University of Melbourne. She is a graduate in medicine from the University of Queensland, and has a doctorate from the same university in the area of intimate partner abuse measurement and prevalence in the general practice setting.

She has published several major review articles on the topic of domestic violence, edited a book on intimate partner abuse and has international recognition of the scale she developed to measure partner abuse, the Composite Abuse Scale. Her current program of research includes the links between partner abuse and depression; educational interventions around identification of partner abuse in primary care settings and a longitudinal study of depressed and abused women attending general practice.

Kelsey has worked in general practice for over fifteen years and has extensive experience in teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

(United Kingdom)

In 1992 John Guillebaud (MA, FRCSE, FRCOG, MFFP) was appointed by University College, London as Professor (now Emeritus) of Family Planning and Reproductive Health, the world’s first practising gynaecologist to be given a personal chair in the specialty. His clinical, teaching and research work is now in Oxford (at the Elliot-Smith Vasectomy Clinic, Churchill Hospital and the Alec Turnbull Reproductive Health Clinic, Radcliffe Infirmary).

As a Trustee of the Margaret Pyke Memorial Trust he also maintains a link with the Centre, of which he is the former Medical Director. Margaret Pyke was the first Chairman of the UK Family Planning Association and a pioneer of the family planning movement. The centre provides a comprehensive publicly funded one-stop reproductive health service. Hundreds of medical students, doctors and nurses are trained each year at the Centre, and new methods of birth control are investigated with the help of the associated Trust.

Professor Guillebaud’s family are Huguenots who came to England more than 300 years ago, and so he retains the French name as it has always been spelled: it is pronounced in two syllables quite simply as “gil-boe”. He was born in Burundi, Africa, brought up in Rwanda, and educated in Uganda, Kenya and Britain.

Believing with UNICEF that globally “family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other technology now available to the human race”, he is frequently called on as a consultant on reproductive health issues by WHO and other international and national bodies.

He has travelled to every continent promoting planned parenthood and concern for the environment, and in 1993 received the prestigious Evian/Birthright Health Award “for his tireless campaigning on overpopulation: human numbers, a crucial factor in meeting human needs on a finite planet”. He proposed and co-ordinated the Environment Time Capsule project based at Kew Gardens.

Professor Guillebaud has authored or co-authored seven books and more than 300 other publications for the medical profession and general public on issues relating to birth control, reproductive health, population and environmental sustainability.

Contraception Update

(Queensland)

Professor Ian Findlay (Bsc., PHD.) holds the Chair of Molecular Diagnostics in the School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science at Griffith University. Professor Findlay brings more than a decade of leading cutting-edge diagnostic expertise, particularly in DNA analysis of small and difficult samples.

He is Chief Scientific Officer and Director of Gribbles Molecular Science (GMS), the biotech R&D division of Gribbles Pathology and now Healthscope. GMS has purpose built dedicated R&D laboratories in Brisbane and service laboratories in Melbourne.

Professor Findlay is also Director of Forensics in GMS forensic labs which recently gained NATA forensic accreditation for DNA analysis makes GMS the only independent forensic lab in Queensland (only 2nd in Australia and SE Asia) and only lab world-wide specializing in single cell forensics. Ongoing forensic work includes DNA fingerprinting of physical fingerprints, single flakes of dandruff from ransom notes, single sperm in rape cases, as well as document security for counter-terrorism applications.

Professor Findlay is also Director of id-DNA Pty Ltd, a provider of authentication/verification identification tagging through DNA technologies. These patented id-DNA technologies incorporate two established technologies: the ultimate identification system of DNA Fingerprinting combined with tagging technologies using RFID (radio frequency identification devices) providing improved tracking for a wide variety of Healthcare environments.

Professor Findlay received his PhD from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom where he directed an IVF program and led a clinical preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) programme. In 1999, he immigrated to Australia as Senior Research Fellow at the IMB and later Associate Professor at the University of Queensland before moving to GMS and Griffith University to continue his research interests.

Ian’s career has mainly focussed on DNA analysis from small numbers of cells and difficult samples. He pioneered the field of genetic identification and analysis of small samples and was the first in the world to perform DNA fingerprinting on a single cell in 1994 and which was later published in the prestigious journal “Nature” in 1997.

GMS is using this technology for major applications including non-invasive prenatal diagnosis from PAP smears, IVF, disease predisposition and pharmacogenomics using SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms, arguably the future of genomics) as well as forensics where even single cells from crime scenes can now be accurately DNA fingerprinted.

Ian’s research includes prenatal diagnosis by analyzing fetal cells isolated from Pap smears taken from pregnant women. He has developed techniques to screen these cells for a range of genetic and chromosomal abnormalities that give rise to diseases such as Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis or thalassaemia. Clinical trials for this technology are currently underway.

In 1998 the European Society of Human Genetics awarded him “Scientist of the Year”. Ian has also been an inventor on 11 patents and has over 50 publications in major, peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals, and chapters in several textbooks. Ian has also been invited as a keynote speaker at a large number of National and International Conferences as well as author of more than 200 poster and abstract presentations.

He has also received, as a principal investigator, or co-applicant, more than $5 million dollars in competitive research grant funding including NH&MRC and ARC.

(Victoria)

Susan Davis is the Professor of Women’s Health, Monash University, and Director of the Monash University NHMRC Centre of Clinical Research Excellence in Women’s Health, Victoria, Australia. She was Director of Research of the Jean Hailes Foundation 1997-2004 and held the Jean Hailes Chair of Women’s Health 2003-4. Professor Davis is past President of the Australasian Menopause Society and has recently served on guideline committees for the US Endocrine Society and the North American Menopause Society. She has published over 150 peer reviewed manuscripts including publications in the Lancet, JAMA and New England Journal of Medicine.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including an NHMRC Research Scholarship from 1986 to 1988, the Robert Greenblatt Prize for Research of the International Menopause Society 1993, the Glenn Aging Award of the US Endocrine Society 2000, the Glaxo-Welcome Diabetes Education Award 2000, the Barbara Gross Award of the Australasian Menopause Society 2002, and the North American Menopause Society/Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals Androgen Research Award 2003.

(Western Australia)

Ian Hammond graduated in Medicine from Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, London. Initially Ian trained in Paediatrics and then O&G and ultimately in Gynaecologic Oncology in UK and Toronto.

Ian Hammond is currently working at the Western Australian Gynaecologic Cancer Service, King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women in Perth. He is Director of Gynaecology at King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women and is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia.

Ian is an enthusiastic and respected medical educator and is actively involved in the training of specialist trainees in O&G and subspecialty trainees in gynaecologic oncology. He was responsible for the development and implementation of the Anatomy of Complications workshops (aimed at the prevention and management of complications in O&G surgery). He is a member of the expert advisory group to the National Ovarian Cancer Program and Chair, Guidelines Review Group, Review of NHMRC document ” Screening to Prevent Cancer: Guidelines for the Management of Women with Screen Detected Abnormalities.”

Ian’s current research and interests include: Evaluation of Educational Strategies in Post graduate Training, Innovation in surgical training, Quality of Life issues for cancer patients and Role of Interventional Counselling in women with gynaecological cancer as well as Audit and Performance Evaluation in Gynaecologic Surgical Practice.

(Queensland)

Ian Frazer BSc (Hons)., MB ChB Edinburgh., FRCP(Ed)., MD., FRACPA. is director of the Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research, a research centre of the University of Queensland at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane.

He was trained as a renal physician and clinical immunologist in Edinburgh, Scotland before emigrating in 1981 to Melbourne, Australia to continue his clinical training and to pursue studies in viral immunology and autoimmunity at the Walter and Eliza Hall institute of Medical Research with Prof Ian Mackay. In 1985 he moved north to Brisbane to take up a teaching post with the University of Queensland, and he now holds a personal chair as head of the Centre.

His current research interests include immunoregulation, and immunotherapeutic vaccines for Papillomavirus associated cancers, for which he holds research funding from several Australian and US funding bodies. Dr Frazer teaches immunology to undergraduate and graduate students of the University. He chairs the Medical and Scientific advisory committee of the Queensland Cancer Fund, and is a board member of the Cancer Council Australia. He advises the WHO and the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation on papillomavirus vaccines.

Ian Frazer developed the first papillomavirus prophylactic vaccine, the patents for which are now licensed from the University of Queensland to Merck. The vaccine is in late phase clinical trials, with predicted US $1 billion per annum sales. He is developing with CSL a papillomavirus therapeutic vaccine based on jointly held IP, which is in early phase clinical trials. He holds issued patents in the field of optimising gene expression, currently undergoing commercial development through Uniquest, the University of Queensland’s commercialisation arm. He consults or has consulted for Uniquest, CSL, Merck, and 3M Pharmaceuticals in the fields of vaccines and immunotherapy.

Ian Frazer has held continuous research funding from the NHMRC since 1985, mostly relating to papillomaviruses or to tumour immunology. He also holds, or has held within the last 5 years, competitive research grants from the Queensland Cancer Fund, the Cancer Research Institute of New York, and the NIH.

Click more information on Professor Ian Frazer.

(United Kingdom)

Colm O’Mahony MD., FRCP., BSc., Dip.Ven. is a Consultant in Genito-Urinary Medicine at the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Trust. He deals with sexually transmitted infections, HIV / AIDS and psychosexual medicine. He was the Postgraduate Tutor in that Trust from 1992 to 1999.

He first qualified in Science with a degree in Microbiology in 1975, and then went on to do Medicine, in the hope of putting off the day when he would finally have to work for a living! He was never clever enough to ever become a “real proper doctor” and he liked talking to patients far too much to ever consider being a surgeon. Fortuitously, he ended up in a VD Clinic in Sir Patrick Dunn’s Hospital in Dublin, doing a session, and there – like St Paul on the road to Damascus, enlightenment. Here was just the job for your average repressed Irish Catholic. There was sex, shame, guilt, anxiety, confession, forgiveness and penance. He had found his niche!

He came to England in 1986 to explore the sexual diversity of Liverpool and finally to a Consultant post in Chester in 1990. As Postgraduate Tutor he infuriated and delighted; exposing the farce of fund holding, the idiocy of audit, and the small-minded bureaucracy of cynical governance. Most of all, he showed that life without “sex, love, passion and desire” is no life – at all, at all”.

He was elected as Chairman of the National Association of GU Doctors in 2001. He worked with the BBC and has done several programmes, the most popular of all being “Sex, warts and all” shown on BBC Choice 2002. He was the Sex Doctor on the BBC Choice website www.bbc.co.uk/choice/sexwartsandall/ answering questions by e-mail from distressed young people for a year, until the Daily Mail complained about soft porn on the BBC who then scrapped the site, December 2002. Some of the feature articles are now on the Chester Clinic Website.

Dr O’Mahony occasionally does after-dinner talks, and writes a regular piece in the Journal of Sexually Transmitted Infections, entitled “Chester Chronicles” and an editorial “View from the frontline” in the INT J STD AIDS.