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Speakers Biographies Adams, Dr. Patch | Andrews, Prof. Gary | Anton, Mr. Bill | Bartlett, Prof. Helen | Beaumont, Dr. Paul | Braun, Ms. Lesley |Burrows, Prof. Graham | Byles, Prof. Julie | Cabot, Dr. Sandra | Carnes, Prof. Bruce | Cohen, Prof. Marc | Cribb, Mr. Paul | Cumming, Prof. Robert G | Curley, Mr. Mike | Curran, Assoc. Prof. James
Medical doctor; Clown; Performer; Social Activist; Founder and Director of the Gesundheit Institute, a holistic medical community that has provided free medical care to thousands of patients since it began in 1971; Author of Gesundheit, which describes his work and ideas about the current health care system Meet Patch Adams, the real person behind the hit movie Patch Adams starring Robin Williams. Patch is both a medical doctor and a clown...but he is also a social activist who has devoted 30 years to changing America's Healthcare system, a system which he describes as expensive and elitist. He believes that laughter, joy and creativity are an integral part of the healing process and therefore true health care must incorporate such life. Doctors and patients in his model relate to each other on the basis of mutual trust, and patients receive plenty of time from their doctors. Allopathic doctors and practitioners of alternative medicine will work side by side. If you think that all sounds like a utopian impossibility, it isn't. Patch and his colleagues practiced medicine at the Gesundheit Institute together in West Virgina that way for 12 years in what he calls their "pilot project." They saw 15,000 patients. Patch Adams has devoted his life to the study of what makes people happy. http://www.bigspeak.com/patch-adams.html
Gary Robert Andrews is Professor of Ageing,
University of South Australia (0.5 FTE) and Professor and Director of
the Centre for Ageing Studies, a WHO Collaborating Centre on Population
Ageing and an affiliated Research Centre of Flinders University and
the University of South Australia. In addition he serves as Academic
Director of the Australian Centre for Community Ageing. He is the Immediate-Past
President of the International Association of Gerontology. In 1999 he was appointed to the United Nations as Special Adviser on Ageing, Department of Economic and Social Affairs for a period of twelve months to co-ordinate a number of global research and policy related activities during the 1999 International Year of Older Persons. Professor Andrews was the Convener of the Valencia Forum held immediately prior to the UN World Assembly on Ageing in April 2002. The forum was held for the purpose of providing input to the World Assembly from the world's scientists, academics and practitioners in ageing. At present Professor Andrews serves on the Board's of Help Age International, Help the Aged (UK), the UN Institute on Ageing (Malta) and the Novartis Foundation for Gerontology. The Secretary General of the United Nations, has honored Gary Andrews by the conferring of a Special Testimonial for his international work on ageing. Other awards he has received include: British
Geriatrics Society (50th anniversary medal for contributions to research
and aged care), The Australian Association of Gerontology (honorary
life membership) and the Academy of Rehabilitation Medicine of the Royal
Australasian College of Physicians Medal for outstanding contribution
to Rehabilitation Medicine. He was recently awarded a Centenerary Medal
for his work in ageing research. He is the Principal Investigator in
a major on-going populations based longitudinal study of ageing in Adelaide,
South Australia and has been responsible for an extensive series of
cross-national studies of ageing in developing countries of Asia, the
Pacific and the Middle East. He has published over 100 articles in the
international gerontological literature, serves on number of editorial
boards of international journals and has continued to play an active
senior role in national and international professional gerontological
associations and ageing related organisations over many years. Gary
is a member of the National Advisory Committee on Ageing and the World
Health Organization International Advisory Committee on Health and Ageing.
Clinical Biochemistry Bill Anton is a Nutritional and Clinical Biochemist. He received his degree from Monash University, in Melbourne. He has been working in the pathology field for
over 20 years, with experience and qualifications in both biochemistry
and microbiology. Presently he is the Medical Research Director
of the LifeSource Centres located in Melbourne. Mr. Anton has been a popular guest on local,
regional and national radio "talk shows". Recently he was
asked to lecture to medical practitioners around Australia, Paris, Monte
Carlo, Singapore and the USA. He has lectured to Doctors, Naturopaths,
Chiropractors, Physiotherapists and other health care professionals,
as well as to the general public in most Australian capital cities,
and numerous rural centres, Asia and Europe.
Professor Bartlett is Foundation Director at the Australasian Centre on Ageing, University of Queensland. Since 1986 she has held research and lecturing positions in social policy and health care in UK, Western Australia and Hong Kong. From 1995 to 2001 she was Professor of Health Studies and Deputy Head in the School of Health Care at Oxford Brookes University where she also established and was director of the Oxford Centre for Health Care Research and Development. In 1989 she was one of the founding Co-Directors of the Oxford Dementia Centre. Her research has focused on quality and policy issues in community and aged care. She is currently involved in projects on ageing policy, healthy ageing and residential aged care. Her publications include three books on nursing homes and continuing care and numerous papers on ageing and aged care in refereed journals. She is on the Editorial Board of the Australasian Journal of Ageing, the Hong Kong Journal of Gerontology and the Journal of Integrated Care. About the Australasian Centre on Ageing Mission
In 2001 the University of Queensland endorsed ageing as a strategic area for development and established the Australasian Centre on Ageing. The Centre is supported by the Faculties of Social and Behavioural Sciences and Health Sciences, the Vice-Chancellor's Strategic Funds and the Department of Families, Queensland Government. The official launch of the Centre took place in August 2002 and was attended by key stakeholders, including older people's organisations, policy makers, providers, and researchers. To signify the Centre's rapidly expanding interests and remit, the Centre's name was changed from the Centre for Human Ageing to the Australasian Centre on Ageing. As the first Centre of its kind in Australia, The Centre integrates and focuses research expertise in human ageing from across the university and links it with government and community priorities, to form a world class international centre of research excellence. A key goal is promote evidence-based policy and practice for Australia's older population by working closely with policy-makers, providers and practitioners. The Centre acts as catalyst and coordinator for the multidisciplinary study of ageing, in collaboration with researchers from many different disciplines (e.g. psychiatry, physiotherapy, social work). It also acts as the information hub for research and training throughout the University and provides an umbrella for ageing research that ranges from the social and economic to the molecular and biological changes that occur in an ageing population. Over 100 projects in progress or recently completed by researchers at UQ are listed in the Centre's Research Directory which can be found on this Website. The Centre's multidisciplinary team comprises
health and social scientists, doctoral students and associates from
Queensland government departments. In its first two years the Centre
has established research programs in priority ageing issues, involving
numerous partnerships with external agencies. The 50+ Registry is also
growing rapidly and provides an important source of research participants
from the community. Developing opportunities for research students to
work with the Centre is a priority and there are currently ten research
students associated with the Centre. In addition, the Centre continues
to help disseminate the latest research findings through its Colloquium
series, occasional papers and conferences. Professor Helen Bartlett Dr. Paul Ernest Beaumont commenced practicing
in 1976 with the late Prof. Fred Hollows. Over the years, he has shown
a keen interest in the cause, prevention and treatment of age-related
macular degeneration. He has collected a vast amount of personal patient
data in order to correlate such risk factors as blood pressure, diet,
smoking and family history for research into the cause and hopefully
prevention of this severe blinding disease in our ageing population.
Macular degeneration is now the leading cause of blindness in Australia,
being responsible for over two-thirds of blindness in Australians aged
50 or older. Lesley Braun B.Pharm. Dip.App.Sci.NAT. Grad. Dip.Phytotherapy. Lesley Braun is one of a handful of health care professionals that straddles two professions which have traditionally been diametrically opposed to each other. Having trained as a pharmacist, she is also a naturopath with post-graduate training in phytotherapy. As a result, she is well placed to understand how modern medicine can integrate with the best of complementary medicine; ultimately creating a health care system that meets the needs of all. Currently, Lesley works as an independent technical consultant to Australia's leading complementary medicine company, Mayne consumer and the Healthsense retail pharmacy group. A major achievement was developing the popular Faulding Healthcare herb-drug interaction chart in 2000, which was distributed to over 50,000 general practitioners, pharmacists, naturopaths, and health care professionals working in universities, hospitals and retail. She has also lectured in Advanced Nutrition and Integrated Pharmacology at the Melbourne College of Natural Medicine, is a regular speaker at both Pharmaceutical and Integrative health conferences, and has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed publications such as the Australian Pharmacist, Australian Family Physician, the Australian Journal of Pharmacy, Journal of Complementary Medicine and Diversity. In 2004, her first book entitled ' A clinical guide to herbal and natural supplements - - the top 100 - from an evidence based perspective" will be released. She is also completing a PhD at RMIT, investigating the area of complementary medicine use within hospitals, risk management and integration. Like many other women, she tries to balance
her career with finding time to enjoy a wonderful husband, three beautiful
daughters, a little water skiing and the odd good coffee.
Department Of Psychiatry, Graham Burrows is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne and Director of the Mental Health Clinical Service Unit at the Austin Hospital, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia. Professor Burrows has published more than 650 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. He is the author or editor of more than 95 books, including the Handbook of Anxiety Disorders and the Handbook of General Hospital Psychiatry and has contributed chapters to approximately 190 other scientific books. He serves on the editorial boards of 30 International and Australian journals. Professor Burrows serves on a number of advisory boards to Australia, International, Governmental and Scientific Organisations, including the World Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organisation. He was President of the First and Second World Congress on Stress, Chairman of the International Congress in Melbourne Collegium International Neuropschopharmacologicum (CINP), Chairman of the Mental Health Foundation of Australia and the Alzheimer's Association Victoria. Professor Burrows has been honoured with
the following awards for distinguished service to medicine - the Order
of Australia (AO) in 1989, Knight of The Order of Saint John of Jerusalem
(KSJ) in 1996, Knight Commander of Grace of The Order of Saint John
of Jerusalem (KCSJ) 2001 and the Paul Harris Fellowship, Rotary International
in 1997. Professor Julie Byles is Director
of the Centre for Research and Education I Ageing in the Faculty Health
at the University of Newcastle. Professor Byles' research interests
in ageing include the role of health services in maintaining quality
of life for older people, and in determining physical, psychological
and social factors associated with 'positive ageing'. Professor Byles
is an investigator on the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health;
her main interest is in the oldest cohort, which involves around 10,000
women who were aged 70 to 75 years at baseline in 1996. She was also
the lead investigator on the Department of Veterans' Affairs' Preventive
Care Trial - a ten-centre randomised controlled trial of the effectiveness
of health assessments for older Australian veterans and war widows.
Dr Cabot graduated with honours in Medicine and
Surgery from the University of South Australia in 1975. Dr Cabot returned to Australia in the late 1980's to resume her practice and also decided to become an author. Her first book titled "Women's Health" was an authoritative holistic health guide. Subsequently she wrote several more ground breaking books - "Menopause - HRT and its Natural Alternatives", "Don't Let Hormones Ruin Your Life", "The Body Shaping Diet", "The Liver Cleansing Diet", "The Healthy Liver and Bowel Book", "Boost Your Energy", "Raw Juices can save your Life" and "Can't lose weight? - Unlock the secrets that make you store fat"
Dr Cabot (aka The Flying Doctor) is a commercial
pilot and flies herself to seminars throughout Australia, often visiting
remote areas to help people learn more about her health message. She
has conducted health seminars all over the world and is frequently asked
to lecture for numerous health organisations such as The American Liver
Foundation and the Primary Biliary Cirrhosis Society. Dr Cabot has a very exciting life flying around
Australia and the USA and meeting thousands of people. Thankfully she
still has time to practise medicine.
Reynolds Department of Geriatric Medicine Bruce Carnes received a B.S. in biology
from the University of Utah in 1973, an M.S. in Population Biology from
the University of Houston in 1975, an M.A. in Statistics and a Ph.D.
in Theoretical Ecology from the University of Kansas in 1980. Dr. Carnes
spent 19 years as a research scientist in the Division of Biological
and Medical Research at Argonne National Laboratory. He then spent 4
years as a Senior Research Scientist in the Center on Aging at the National
Opinion Research Center located at the University of Chicago. Currently,
Dr. Carnes is a faculty member of the Reynolds Department of Geriatric
Medicine at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. Dr. Carnes
is interested in why organisms die, why they die when they do, and whether
age patterns of death are similar for different kinds of animals. These
research interests have led Dr. Carnes to develop and pursue two separate
but related research agendas. In research funded by the Department of
Energy (DOE) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),
Dr. Carnes has developed mathematical models to predict human mortality
caused by radiation from historical data on comparably exposed laboratory
animals. For example, he has recently published successful predictions
of mortality among the A-bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki derived
from mortality data for comparably exposed mice. His research contributes
to NASA's efforts to protect astronauts from the health risks associated
with exposure to radiation during prolonged missions in space. Dr. Carnes
is using his funding from the National Institute on Aging to expand
upon the scientific contributions that he has already made to the emerging
field of biodemography. By melding together biology and demography,
Dr. Carnes has applied his interests in comparing mortality within and
between species to such problems as predicting future mortality, estimating
upper limits to the longevity of individuals and the life expectancy
of populations, and exploring how much influence the genetic constitution
of organisms has on their longevity. As is typical of scientists, Dr.
Carnes devotes his time to research, writing scientific papers, giving
lectures to students and making presentations at scientific conferences
around the world. Prof Marc Cohen is the Founding Head of the Department
of Complementary Medicine at RMIT, President of the Australasian Integrative
Medicine Association and Honorary Senior Research Fellow with the Monash
Institute of Health Services Research. He addition to a medical degree
he has completed degrees in psychology, physiology, Chinese medicine,
and electrical engineering. Paul John Cribb BHSci. HMS BChem Sci. Hons. CSCS. Born and based in Australia, Paul is the Director of Research of AST Sports Science - one of the most successful and progressive sports science companies in the United States. In what he describes as "the coolest job in the world" Paul designs and conducts research that investigates how to enhance muscle growth and athletic performance using advanced training techniques and natural alternatives. He oversees several research projects where he is based at Victoria University's Exercise Metabolism Unit and works in collaboration with several science faculties in the United States. Paul travels regularly between the US and Australia presenting the very latest sports science research and works with some of the finest athletes in the world. Paul holds two Bachelor's Degree's (Exercise Physiology and Chemical Science), is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with the National Strength and Conditioning Association, USA), and is completing a PhD in biochemistry at Victoria University's Footscray Park Campus. Research Interest Particulalry, the role of various nutritional interventions and supplements (e.g., whey proteins, creatine, etc.) on the expression of various skeletal muscle-specific and immunological genes and proteins and the role in muscle hypertrophy and atrophy in special populations (e.g., athletes and aging).
Professor Robert G Cumming MB BS, MPH, PhD Professor Cumming completed his medical degree in 1979 and, after four years in clinical medicine, trained as an epidemiologist in Sydney and New York. He has worked at the University of Sydney since 1990. Professor Cumming has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers. His main research interests are falls, fractures and osteoporosis; eye diseases; and health of older men. He is a Chief Investigator on several large cohort studies: the Blue Mountains Eye Study, the Fracture Risk Epidemiology in the Elderly Study, and the Concord Hormones and Ageing in Men Project. Professor Cumming is a co-author of the Cochrane Collaboration report on falls prevention and has written expert commentaries on diagnosis and management of osteoporosis. He was Head of the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney in 2000-2001 and Secretary of the Australasian Epidemiological Association (AEA) from 1996 to 2001. In 2002 Professor Cumming was appointed Professor
of Epidemiology and Geriatric Medicine in the University of Sydney,
based in the Centre for Education and Research on Ageing at Concord
Hospital. He is becoming increasingly interested in the use of epidemiological
methods to help understand fundamental biological ageing processes.
Mike obtained his Science degree majoring
in Biochemistry in 1977. Since then he has become one of Australia's
leading experts and educators in Natural Medicines. His 23 year career
provides a wealth of experience drawn from medical research, academia,
clinical nutrition and preventative medicine.
Jim is Associate Professor in the University of New South Wales, School of Rural Health, based at the Coffs Harbour Education Campus. Previously he was Director of Community and Aged Services for Tasmania and more recently an active General Practitioner in Coffs. His interests lie in the provision of services to the Aged and particularly the application of technology to these areas. His present brief is to set up an Aged Services
Research Collaboration at Coffs Harbour involving both UNSW School of
Rural Health and Southern Cross University School of Health and Allied
Services.
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Dr. Patch Adams, MD 
GARY R ANDREWS
Bill Anton
Professor Helen Bartlett
Professor Julie Byles
Dr Sandra Cabot
Bruce A. Carnes, Ph.D.
Prof Marc Cohen
Mike Curley - BSc. Biochem, 
James T. Curran