The Hon Nicola Roxon is the Minister for Health and Ageing in the new Labor Government.

She has been a member of Federal Parliament since 1998 representing the western suburbs seat of Gellibrand in Melbourne.

Nicola has been in Parliament for 10 years and was elected to the House of Representatives in October 1998 as the Federal Labor Member for Gellibrand
She previously held the positions of Shadow Minister for Health, Shadow Attorney-General, Shadow Minister Children and Youth, Shadow Minister for Immigration and assisted the Leader on the Status of Women.

Prior to entering Parliament, Nicola worked as a Senior Associate at Labor law firm Maurice Blackburn, a Judge’s Associate with High Court Justice Mary Gaudron, and as an Industrial Officer with the National Union of Workers.

Nicola has a First Class Honours Law degree and Arts degree from Melbourne University. She won the Supreme Court Prize for top law graduate in 1990 .

She is in charge of the Government’s $2.5 billion Health and Hospital Reform Plan.

Abbe Anderson is the CEO of GPpartners Ltd, Australia’s largest Division of General Practice serving a population of over 600,000 people and 800 GPs in north Brisbane. Abbe has worked with GPpartners in various roles since 2002.

Abbe has an MBA from Otago University in New Zealand and is currently enrolled in PhD studies through the University of New South Wales.

Abbe has been with GPpartners throughout the Team Care 2 Coordinated Care Trial and subsequent service coordination work funded by DVA, Medibank Private and Queensland Health.

The Team Care 2 trial proved GP-led service coordination can reduce unnecessary hospital admissions by an average of 25% for patients with chronic and complex care needs (intervention versus control patients in randomised control trial).

GPpartners is now working closely with private insurers to find other innovative ways to improve patient care in the primary health care sector.

Research Interests

No country can afford the health care its citizens desire. Resources should be deployed in terms of the burden of disease and the cost-effectiveness of interventions for it is the most efficient policy but how do you reconcile fairness, equity and caring for the sick? we have a research program active in this area. In developed countries chronic disease is the problem: both prevention of the disease and better patient centered management once they occur. We have an active program to develop school based prevention of anxiety and depressive disorders. We have an active program to improve patient education in primary care [see http://www.climate.tv]

Teaching Interests

Undergraduate and postgraduate programs in the recognition and management of anxiety and depressive disorders. Books, CD-ROMs, Videos, Web Sites and interactive computer programs for health professionals and their patients [see http://www.crufad.org and http://www.climate.tv].
With CLIMATE/GP we are researching the delivery of patient education by computer aided learning. we already have 12 modules for six diseases: asthma, depression, diabetes, heart failure, panic and social phobia [see http://www.climate.tv]. With CLIMATE/Schools we are developing and researching the computer aided learning to insert into the current school curriculum to prevent the development of anxiety, depressive and substance use disorders. We are interested in PhD students with a backgrouind in psychology, education, or computer aided instruction.

Society Memberships & Professional Activities

Director, World Health Organization for Evidence in Mental Health Policy.
Fellow of Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Fellow of Royal Australian & New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.

Funding Sources

World Health Organization
National Health & Medical Research Council
Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care.

Other Postgraduate Research

- Prevention
PhD students graduating in 2001, 2002, 2003 were in epidemiology and service delivery: see papers by Sanderson K, Issakidis C and Slade T.
Currently a student is enrolling with "prevention of anxiety and depressive disorders in junior high school students" as the topic. 

Professor Chris Baggoley was appointed as Chief Executive of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care on 21 December 2007. Prior to this appointment he was Chief Medical Officer in the South Australian Department of Health.

Professor Baggoley is a highly experienced clinician and has devoted much of his career to emergency medicine, becoming Professor of Emergency Medicine at Adelaide University in 2003.

His other medical positions were Director of Emergency Medicine at Royal Adelaide Hospital, Executive Director, Medical Services and Director of Emergency services at ACHA Health SA and Director of Emergency Medicine at Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide.

Professor Baggoley’s other key roles in health have been President of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, Chair of the Committee of Presidents of Medical Colleges, and Chair of the Board of the National Institute of Clinical Studies. His background as a veterinary surgeon and training as a social worker have been useful and steadying influences in his medical career!

Dr Christine Bennett is Chief Medical Officer at Bupa Australia, a position she formerly held with MBF. Prior to that Dr Bennett was Chief Executive Officer, Research Australia Ltd. Dr Bennett has worked in the health care industry as a clinician and administrator in public and private sectors, including as a Partner at KPMG, advising on health and life sciences transactions and business development.

Dr Bennett is a trained paediatrician and a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Dr Bennett was Head of Health Services Planning in NSW Health and worked with Professor Shearman to produce the major maternity services report for NSW that remains the basis of maternity services in that state. She was subsequently the General Manager of the Royal Hospital for Women, and then Chief Executive of Westmead Hospital and Community Health Services. In between these positions she was Director of Clinical Services and Population Health in South Eastern Sydney Area Health Service.

Director, Clinical Epidemiology Unit and Redesigning Care, Flinders Medical Centre & the Southern Adelaide Health Services; Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Flinders University.

Professor David Ben-Tovim is a psychiatrist and clinical epidemiologist by background. He trained in Medicine and Psychiatry at the Middlesex and St Georges University Hospitals in London, and in Epidemiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, also in London. He moved to Australia in 1984, after three-year period working in Botswana.

He has acted as a consultant for the World Health Organisation on a number of occasions, as well as making various attempts to influence the development of health services in South Australia and elsewhere.

He established the Clinical Epidemiology Unit at the Flinders Medical Centre (a 500 bed teaching general hospital in the Southern Suburbs of Adelaide) in 1998, and was Director of Clinical Governance for the hospital from 2000 to 2004.

He is the author of two books and over eighty publications in the peer reviewed literature. He combines the role of head of Clinical Epidemiology with leading the Redesigning Care program within the Southern Adelaide Health Services.

Colin has over 30 years experience in compliance management within the Public and Private Sectors including the Australian Taxation Office, Treasury and KPMG. In various roles with the Australian Taxation Office, culminating in a position as a Senior Assistant Commissioner, Colin has had responsibility to develop and implement compliance strategies across a range of programs and diverse market segments. Colin has been involved in the development of compliance theory and practice, and benchmarking internationally with revenue authorities in the USA, UK, Canada, Japan, Singapore and New Zealand.

As General Manager, Program Review Division, Colin has responsibility for the development and implementation of Medicare Australia’s strategic approach to program integrity and compliance management for $30 billion in payments involving 500 million transactions each year.

Sarah is a Director with Booz & Company based in the Sydney office and leads Booz & Company’s Insurance practice for the region

Relevant Expertise
Sarah has broad and deep Financial Services experience with more than 18 years consulting to insurance, wealth management and retail and corporate banking. She also has relevant experience in sales & marketing issues for other services companies.  Sarah has worked with business leaders throughout Australia/NZ and the U.K/Europe

Education
Sarah was a scholar at Christ’s College, Cambridge and received an Honours Degree in Natural Sciences (Theoretical Chemistry)
Sarah is also a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors

Doug joined Deloitte from SAS Australia in 2006 and is responsible for Advanced Analytics. He has over ten years of practical experience in the application of analytical intelligence across industry including Health Insurance, Workers Compensation, Retail Banking, General Insurance, Superannuation, Federal Government and Retail. His experience includes assisting clients to define precise requirements in predictive analytics for compliance targeting, claims leakage, fraud prevention, employee resourcing, customer segmentation, campaign management and effective direct marketing.  Doug is the Chairman of the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia (IAPA – a not for profit member based organisation with approximately 800 data mining professionals).  

Skills and expertise
Doug has specialised skills in the following areas:

• Leveraging insight from a multitude of often disparate data sources to provide commercially realisable benefit
• Assisting clients formulate business cases relating to the improved use of data through advanced analytics
• Working with business leaders to enable them to prioritise improvements with regard the use of data and analytics

Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D., was appointed Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) on February 5, 2003. Prior to her appointment, Dr. Clancy had served as AHRQ’s Acting Director since March 2002 and previously was Director of the Agency’s Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research (COER).

Dr. Clancy, who is a general internist and health services researcher, is a graduate of Boston College and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Following clinical training in internal medicine, Dr. Clancy was a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She was also an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond before joining AHRQ in 1990.

Dr. Clancy holds an academic appointment at George Washington University School of Medicine (Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Medicine) and serves as Senior Associate Editor, Health Services Research. Dr. Clancy has served on multiple editorial boards (currently Annals of Family Medicine, American Journal of Medical Quality, and Medical Care Research and Review). Dr. Clancy has published widely in peer reviewed journals and has edited or contributed to seven books. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and was elected a Master of the American College of Physicians in 2004.

Her major research interests include various dimensions of health care quality and patient, including women’s health, primary care, access to care services, and the impact of financial incentives on physicians’ decisions.

Professor Mike Daube is Professor of Health Policy at Curtin University of Technology and Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute of WA. He was Western Australia’s Director General of Health from 2001–05 and Chair of the National Public Health Partnership.

He is currently President of the Public Health Association of Australia, the Australian Council on Smoking and Health and the WA Heart Foundation, and Chair of the WA Alcohol and Drug Authority.

He has played a leading role in tobacco control, alcohol and other public health issues nationally and internationally for many years, and has advised governments and NGOs in some thirty countries.

He has received awards for his work from organisations including the World Health Organization, the Public Health Association, the Australian Medical Association, Healthway, the Heart Foundation, Curtin University, ACOSH and the Australian Red Cross.

He is Deputy Chair of the Federal Government’s Taskforce on Preventative Health.

Jean-Pierre Davant is Chairman of the Federation Nationale de la Mutualité Française since 1992. Mutualité Française is the national trade association of health mutuals in France. Health mutuals serve directly approximately 18 million members and cover around 38 million persons in France.

In France mutuals represent 60% of the market share of the complementary health insurance sector but are also a care and service provider. Mutuals manage more than 2,000 facilities (80 private non for profit hospitals, 600 optical centers, 400 dental centers, health centers, elderly and disabled facilities).
Since 2006, Mutualité Française has created a mutual hospitals group called GHMF in order to combine performance and general access to care.

Mr. Davant has more than 28 years of health care management experience. He was formerly Chairman of the National Civil servant mutual Federation and Chairman of several other civil servants mutuals. He is also Chairman of the Hospital Group.

He has founded in 1987 a national Foundation for medical research called “Fondation de l’Avenir pour la recherche médicale appliquée”.

Mr. Davant is author and co-author of several books on the French health care and delivery system. The last book, “la Révolution médicale” was written with Professor Thomas Turz and Professor Guy Vallencien.

Mr. Davant is member of the Bureau of the Economic and Social Council in France, member of the National Health Accounts Commission in France.

Mr. Davant was graduated from the National School of Income and Revenue. He began his professional career in the Income and Revenue Services administration.

Born in Paris in 1945, he is originally from the Pyrenees in the South west of France. He is a former rugby player and strongly active in Sports events related to health matters.

Khoa was born in Vietnam, but left with his parents and brother Anh in a small fishing boat in 1980, at the age of two. They arrived in Australia and settled in Western Sydney, where Khoa grew up and developed a passion for storytelling and the movies.

In 2006, Khoa’s most recent feature film, FOOTY LEGENDS, was released through Icon Films. Khoa directed and co-wrote FOOTY LEGENDS, which received critical praise, including such comments as “a spirited, beautifully realised and highly entertaining sports family drama” (FILMINK magazine), “the feel good movie of the year” (yourMovies) and “Footy Legends triumphs!” (IF Magazine).

In January 2005, Khoa was announced as Young Australian of the Year, the first ever filmmaker to have been awarded the accolade. Ladies and Gentlemen would you please make welcome Khoa Do

Jim Gee has more than 20 years operational, policy and strategic experience as a counter fraud specialist operating in the UK in central government, local government and the NHS. He has also advised the House of Commons Social Security Select Committee and the Minister of State for Welfare Reform on counter fraud issues and currently sits on the Steering Group of the UK Government’s Fraud Review.

After 8 years heading up counter fraud work in London local authorities and advising the Association of London Government, he joined the Department of Health in 1998 as Director of Counter Fraud Services, to advise the Minister of State for Health and to establish and head the new NHS Counter Fraud Service (NHS CFS). He successfully argued that the NHS CFS should have a comprehensive strategic, policy and operational remit. In 2003 he became Chief Executive Officer of the NHS Counter Fraud and Security Management Service.

Between 2000 and 2006 the NHS CFS has financially benefited the NHS to the tune of over £800 million – a 12 : 1 return generated from a £67 million budget. Patient fraud losses were reduced by 55% and fraud losses to professionals by up to 60% in key areas; the NHS CFS also has a 96% successful prosecution rate.

He is also Vice-Chair of the UK Counter Fraud Specialist Professional Accreditation Board, the former founding Chair of the Institute of Counter Fraud Specialists, a member of the Editorial Board of ‘Public Finance’ magazine and the former Director-General of the new European Healthcare Fraud and Corruption Network (EHFCN), an organisation which he helped found in 2003.

At the start of 2007, he joined KPMG Forensic as its Director of Fraud Services, with a remit to develop the holistic, professional approach he pioneered in the NHS, and to offer a high quality, integrated service designed to accurately measure and reduce fraud losses.

Dr Tony Hobbs is a practising GP obstetrician in the NSW rural community of Cootamundra. He has been Chair of the Australian General Practice Network since September 2006.

He is also the chair of the recently formed National Primary Health Care Strategy External Reference Group which provides advice to DoHA and the Minister.

Richard is the Head of Financial Crime Management for Group Security in the Commonwealth Bank. His team is accountable for countering fraud across the Bank’s channels and products.

Financial Crime Management also has accountability for the operational aspects of the Group’s AML and Suppression of Terrorist Financing obligations, including transaction monitoring, enhanced customer due diligence and operation of global payments filters

Richard was a member of the NSW Police Service before joining the Colonial Bank back in 1999 and moving to the CBA as part of the merger in 2001.

Richard is a member of MasterCard’s Global Fraud Advisory Council, a body which provides guidance to MasterCard on fraud trends and prevention initiatives.

Stuart is the head of Deloitte’s actuarial health practice and is a Partner in Deloitte.

In a career lasting over 30 years he has worked as an actuary in Australia, the UK, Singapore and Japan. His career includes roles for major insurers heading Corporate Development and Strategy, Marketing, Sales Channel Support, several years as Appointed Actuary for life and health insurers, and five years as a Director of a UK life insurer.

Stuart’s clients include both health funds and governments.

Richard was appointed Deputy Managing Director and CEO of Macquarie Group Limited and Managing Director of Macquarie Bank Limited in November 2007.

Macquarie is an international provider of banking, financial, advisory, investment and funds management services, with more than 60 office locations in 25 countries. Through its specialist funds, it manages 116 infrastructure assets including major roads, utilities and international airports and approximately 700 real estate assets worldwide. Macquarie has achieved successive years of record profits and growth since 1992.

Richard joined Hill Samuel Australia (Macquarie Group’s predecessor) in 1975, initially working in Corporate Finance. He was Head of the Bank’s Melbourne Office from 1986 until 1988 and became Head of the Corporate Banking Group in 1988. He has been a member of the Group Executive Committee since 1986 and Deputy Managing Director since 1996. Following the restructure of the Macquarie Group in late 2007 he was appointed Managing Director and CEO of Macquarie Bank Limited and Deputy Managing Director of Macquarie Group Limited. He is Chairman of Macquarie Country Wide Trust and Macquarie DDR Trust.

Richard completed his Bachelor of Economics (1st Class Honors) at the University of Sydney and his Advanced Financial Management Course at Stanford University. He is a member of the Government’s Financial Sector Advisory Council and the Australian Financial Markets Association.

He also sits on a number of other boards including Cure Cancer Australia Foundation, the Bradman Foundation and the Sydney Cricket Club.

Marius Smit is a qualified pharmacist who started his corporate career within the South African Private Healthcare industry, initially doing drug utilization reviews and chronic disease management. Ten years ago he was tasked with establishing the Forensic Services function for Discovery Holdings, a group of companies, operating within the Private Healthcare, Long term Insurance, Investment, credit card and wellness industries in South Africa as well as the U.S. the U.K markets. Marius still heads up the Forensic Services function for the Discovery Group and is responsible for the overall fraud management strategy and the implementation thereof. Discovery is the biggest private healthcare funder in South Africa and provide healthcare cover to 2,1 million members.

During 2003, he played an instrumental role in establishing the South African Board of Healthcare Funders’ Forensic Management Unit and is currently still chairman of this initiative. He also serves on the Life Offices Associations’ Forensic Standing Committee and apart from his B. Pharm degree, also holds a diploma in Criminal Justice and Forensic Auditing.