Professor Madeleine Skellern is Director of the National Health, Sustainability and Climate Unit within the Interim Australian Centre for Disease Control, operating as part of the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care. She is also Adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney School of Public Health. Professor Skellern led development of Australia’s first National Health and Climate Strategy, published in December 2023, and is currently leading implementation of the Strategy. Before taking up her current role, Madeleine worked for many years in England as an academic health economist and in a variety of roles in the English National Health Service. One of these roles involved oversight of chronic condition management – including management of asthma and COPD – in English general practice and Primary Care Networks. In this role, Madeleine introduced new policies to support provision of high-quality, low-carbon respiratory care in English general practice.

Danielle Wurzel is a Respiratory Consultant at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Early Career Researcher within the Allergy and Lung Health Unit, The University of Melbourne and Honorary Senior Fellow at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. She has clinical expertise in the assessment and management of acute and chronic respiratory diseases in children. Dr Wurzel completed a PhD in chronic wet cough and bronchiectasis and her ongoing research investigates the role of early life events in the pathogenesis of paediatric chronic lung diseases. She leads a number of NHMRC/MRFF funded studies and is CIA on an NHMRC Clinical Trials and Cohort multi-centre study to investigate the early life risk factors for lung disease in First Nations (Indigenous) Australian children. Dr Wurzel is a member of several sub-committees and working groups including Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand, Lung Foundation Australia and Therapeutic Guidelines Limited.

Dr Needham transitioned into academia from local government with extensive experience in public health policy and planning and is currently a Research Fellow at Deakin University. Her work focuses on the food retail environment and how access and availability to food retail can influence health. Dr Needham’s work emphasises knowledge translation including providing evidence that can support the development of policies to support healthier food retail environments; and supporting local governments, health services and local public health units to implement systems thinking techniques to inform Municipal Public Health Wellbeing Plans and health service delivery. The development of the Australian Food Retail Outlet Monitoring tool was led by Dr Needham, and is an online platform is utilised by researchers, key decision and policy makers and is housed in the Australian Food Environment Dashboard. Dr Needham is also the Co-Design Lead for a $9m MRFF funded project DELIVER (Delivering Enhanced heaLthcare at home through optImising Virtual tools for oldEr people in Rural and regional Australia) which being delivered across the Institute for Health Transformation. Recently Dr Needham has taken on the role of Co-convener for the Nourish Network Local Government Interest Group for 2023 – a collaborative group containing both internal and external Deakin stakeholders to the Nourish Network programme of work. Dr Needham is an Associate member of IHT and REFRESH; and is a researcher in the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre.

Mike is a general paediatrician at the University Hospital Geelong and Senior Research Fellow with the Deakin University Faculty of Health-Institute for Health Transformation, focusing on the co-benefit opportunities of a transition to high-value and environmentally sustainable models of healthcare.

Director – Health Knowledge and Translation, Anthony is the Director of Health Knowledge and Translation at Asthma Australia. In this role he oversees Asthma Australia’s research program, strategic evaluation plans and supervises the quality development of consumer information and education resources. Anthony has a Masters Degree in Social Sciences and is a registered nurse who specialised in critical care nursing. He is responsible for connecting the need of the person with asthma with strategic research and evaluation decisions and the translation of these into consumer benefit.

Professor Reddel is a Research Leader and NHMRC Leadership Fellow at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, Macquarie University. She is Chair of the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) Science Committee.