JAMES RANKIN ORATION In 1994, she became the Medical Director of the Addiction Clinic, and in 2000, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at the Medical University of Vienna. Gabriele Fischer is involved in many epidemiological clinical and psychopharmacological studies in the field of substance use disorder and non – substance related addictions including the topic of co-morbidities; her special research focus includes the aspect of sex/gender differences in psychiatry with a particular emphasis on opioid maintenance standards during pregnancy.
Dr Briony Larance is an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship recipient and Senior Research Fellow at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), UNSW Australia. Her research interests include opioid dependence, opioid substitution therapy and pharmaceutical opioids. Her research focuses on understanding the trajectories and health consequences of pharmaceutical opioid use among diverse populations, including chronic pain patients and people who are opioid dependent and/or inject drugs. She has been involved in epidemiological and clinical studies utilising a range of methods, including randomised-controlled trials, post-marketing surveillance studies, analyses of linked administrative data and cohort studies. Her current projects include: developing and validating an opioid-related behaviour scale; a prospective cohort study of people prescribed opioids for non-cancer pain; a large national study of the impacts of a potentially tamper-proof oxycodone formulation; pharmacoepidemiological studies of opioid utilisation in Australia; and studies of the effectiveness and implementation of long-acting (depot) buprenorphine for opioid dependence. Dr. Kaminer has developed several rating scales including: the Teen Addiction Severity Index (T-ASI), the Teen Treatment Services Review (T-TSR) and the Adolescent Substance Abuse and Goal Commitment questionnaire (ASAGC-Q). He authored 150 scientific publications, served as a guest editor of 4 special issues on adolescent substance abuse and published 5 books including: a) Brief Telephone Continuing Care Therapy for Adolescents, Hazelden, (2010); b) Clinical Manual of Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment, American Psychiatric Publishing (2011); c) Youth substance abuse and co-occurring disorders, American Psychiatric Publishing (2016). Annie Madden is currently a PhD candidate at UNSW and a Community Engagement & Liaison Officer and Research Assistant at the Centre for Social Research in Health (CSRH) also at UNSW. Prior to commencing her PhD and positions at CSRH, Annie was the Executive Officer of the Australian Injecting & Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL) for 16 years until April 2016. She was also the Executive Officer of the NSW Users & AIDS Association (NUAA) from 1994 to 2000. Fiona Measham was appointed Professor of Criminology in the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University in 2012. Fiona has conducted research for over two decades across a broad area of criminology and social policy, exploring changing trends in legal and illegal drugs; the night time economy and the socio-cultural context to consumption; gender; the regulation and policing of intoxication; electronic music scenes and club cultures; issues of deterrence, displacement and desistance; and broader policy implications.
Dr. Harrison G. Pope, Jr. is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and Director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, USA. He has authored more than 320 peer-reviewed papers on a wide range of topics in psychiatry, including work on psychotic disorders, major mood disorders, eating disorders, and substance abuse. Since the 1980s, Dr. Pope taken a particular interest in the abuse of anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS). His published papers in this field have encompassed the psychiatric effects of AAS, the association of AAS use with male body image disorders, studies of the epidemiology of AAS use, and studies of the neuropsychiatric and medical consequences of long-term AAS exposure. Dr. Pope has presented the findings of this research at numerous international scientific meetings and has also appeared in many popular media presentations and documentary films on the subject. Dr Megan Williams is Senior Lecturer in Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing at the Graduate School of Health. She has over 20 years’ experience combining health service delivery, research and education. Megan’s work occurs at the nexus of public health, criminal justice and Aboriginal health and wellbeing and is focused on Aboriginal peoples’ caregiving and health promotion strategies in the criminal justice system and post-prison release, to promote healing and reduce risks for re-incarceration, isolation and harm. Megan is a Wiradjuri descendent, and also has Anglo-Celtic heritage. She is a research partner for ‘Living Our Ways’ study by the First Peoples Disability Network and ‘Safe Spaces’ research by Mibbinbah Men’s Spaces health promotion charity.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Professor Paul Dietze is the Director of the Behaviours and Health Risks Program at the Burnet Institute. With over 20 years’ experience he is one of the leading researchers in the alcohol and other drug sector in Australia with an extensive history of significant and innovative research into the impact of alcohol and other drugs in the community.
He has established significant work groups at Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre and the Burnet Institute and collaborates widely with researchers from Australia and internationally. He has played a pivotal role in work examining drug overdose and responses since the late 1990s, including the development of WHO guidelines for the community management of opioid overdose in 2014.
Univ. Prof. Dr. Gabriele Fischer studied human medicine at the Medical University of Vienna. She received her doctor’s degree in 1984, when she started to specialize in the field of psychiatry and neurology. From 1986 – 1989, Gabriele Fischer did a research - fellowship & psychiatric residency training at Washington University Medical School, St. Louis, Missouri USA.
Marianne Jauncey began her work in the AOD field at the Kirketon Road Centre in 1998. She has often described answering the ad for a doctor where a ‘flexible and eclectic approach’ was needed, and being mistaken for a client on her first visit to the Centre. But clearly these early formative years were transformative, surrounded by such a dedicated and committed staff team at KRC and under the tutelage of another APSAD warrier, Dr Ingrid van Beek. Marianne went on to do a Masters in Public health, complete a training program within NSW health for public health officers specialising in drug and alcohol, and then become a public health physician.
She filled in as the temporary Medical Director of the Supervised Injecting Centre in 2005 when Ingrid went on (well deserved) long service leave – and Marianne then had a political baptism of fire with the Premier of the State resigning resulting in a new Health Minister as well as new Premier, the Leader of the Opposition suddenly leaving politics also and his replacement making the first policy announcement being that if elected he would close the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre, and A Current Affair airing a program that accused injecting centre staff of being drug dealers. Hereafter she considered an alternate career plan in academia, but some years later when Ingrid was ready to leave MSIC for good, Marianne went on to become the Centre’s second Medical Director.
Dr. Yifrah Kaminer main interest has been focusing on clinical research of the assessment, treatment and continuity of care of substance use disorders in youth. He has special interest in co-occurring depressive disorders. He has received US research funding from NIAAA, NIDA, and CSAT and his research team developed treatment and continued care manuals including the MET and CBT manuals for the Multisite Cannabis Youth Treatment (CYT) study.
Dr. Emmanuel Kuntsche has been trained in Psychology (University of Jena, Germany), Sociology (University of Jena, Germany), Psychiatry (Clinique de la Borde, France, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and University of Bamberg, Germany), Public Health (University of Maastricht, the Netherlands) and Statistics (University of Essex, UK). He is currently working as a Senior Researcher at Addiction Switzerland, an NGO located in Lausanne, Switzerland, as an Associate Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and as a Honorary Professor at the Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. He recently accepted becoming a Full Professor of Public Health at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and the Director of the Center for Alcohol Policy Research (taking over from Prof. Robin Room) from August 1, 2017, on.
Dr. E. Kuntsche has published more than 300 scientific articles, book chapters, and research reports (more than 100 in the last five years) and has contributed to more than 190 scientific meetings (67 times as invited/keynote speaker). He has had editorial appointments at five international journals (currently Addiction and Drug and Alcohol Review).
She is a founding member and current Board member of Harm Reduction Australia, is well published and has held numerous high-level appointments. Annie has dedicated her entire professional career to promoting the health and human rights of people who use and inject illicit drugs and people in drug treatment.
