Stephen W. Duffy

Stephen Duffy works as Professor of Cancer Screening at Queen Mary University of London, in the Cancer Research UK Centre for Epidemiology, Mathematics and Statistics. Previous employers include the MRC, IARC, and the Universities of Edinburgh and Durham.

He was trained as a statistician, educated at the University of Edinburgh and Imperial College, London.

He has worked in the UK, France, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark and Russia. He specialises in evaluation of cancer screening programmes, cancer epidemiology, and statistical methods for epidemiological studies. He has worked on various mammography screening trials, including the pioneering Swedish Two-County Trial, the Gothenburg Trial, the UK Breast Screening Frequency Trial, the FH01 study of mammography in young women with a family history of breast cancer and the CADET studies of computer aided detection in mammography.

A/Prof Gelareh Farshid

A/Prof Gelareh Farshid is the Clinical Director of BreastScreen SA. Among other professional roles, she is the secretary of the International Society for Breast Pathology, she represents the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia at the BSA National Quality Management Committee. She chairs the Expert Committee for Breast Cancer Structured Pathology Reproting.

Dr Mukesh Haikerwal AO

National Clinical Lead, National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA)

Dr Mukesh Haikerwal is the National Clinical Lead with the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) leading a team of clinicians providing input into the NEHTA work program to deliver eHealth for Australia. In January 2011 Dr Haikerwal was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to medical administration, to the promotion of public health through leadership roles with professional organisations, particularly the Australian Medical Association (AMA), to the reform of the Australian health system through the optimisation of information technology, and as a general practitioner. In April 2011, Dr Haikerwal was appointed Chair of the World Medical Association (WMA).

Professor John Hopper

Professor John Hopper, AM, is one of nine inaugural Australia Fellows awarded by NHMRC in 2007. He is a Professorial Fellow with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, and is currently Director (Research) of the Centre for Molecular, Environmental, Genetic and Analytic Epidemiology in the Department of Public Health at The University of Melbourne. He has published more than 500 papers, specialising in the statistical methodology and its application for analysing twin and family data, and addressing the genetic and environmental aetiology of diseases and health. He is principal or co-investigator on a number of case-control-family studies across a range of diseases and conditions, particularly breast cancer and colorectal cancer (both funded by the National Institutes of Health (USA)), prostate cancer, melanoma, childhood cancer and asthma. He is a co-investigator on several cohort studies, including Health 2020 and long term follow-up of the 1968 Tasmanian Asthma Study. Professor Hopper has been Director of the Australian Twin Registry since 1990 and has conducted a large study of mammographic density using twins and sisters recruited through the Registry.

Associate Professor Nehmat Houssami

MB BS (Hons), MPH, MEd, FAFPHM, FASBP, PhD

A/Prof Houssami is a breast clinician, and a public health physician/medical epidemiologist. She undertook medical training at the Sydney Medical School, and has practiced in dedicated breast screening and diagnostic services since 1990. She is Principal Research Fellow with the Screening & Test Evaluation Program, University of Sydney, and a consultant physician at the Royal Hospital for Women. The majority of her post-doctoral research has examined breast imaging, image-guided intervention, and the impact of testing on clinical outcomes. She has experience in evaluating new imaging technologies and in complex evidence reviews of diagnostic or prognostic testing. She is the senior investigator in several international collaborations including the Breast Cancer Survivors’ Screening Study; her current research covers preoperative MRI, breast imaging in monitoring response to therapy, HER2 discordance between primary breast cancer and its metastasis, and testing in breast cancer staging. She has approximately 100 peer-reviewed publications, and is Editor for ‘Imaging, screening and early diagnosis’ with The Breast. She is a member of the BreastScreen NSW State Accreditation & Quality Improvement Committee.

Elizabeth Kennedy

B.A LL.B (HONS) LL.M (MELB) GRAD DIP HEALTH & MED LAW

Elizabeth Kennedy is currently Corporate Counsel of Epworth Foundation which operates Epworth HealthCare the largest not for profit health service in Victoria. Until late 2009, Elizabeth was Corporate Counsel at The Royal Women’s Hospital, a position she held for some eight years, having been originally appointed as Corporate Counsel of both the Royal Women’s and the Royal Children’s Hospitals in 2002.

Immediately prior to her appointment to Women's and Children's Health, Elizabeth was Corporate Counsel at Southern Health for 3.5 years, and prior to that was the corporate solicitor to the Australian Medical Association (Victoria).

During her 30+ year career as a lawyer, she has been a Consultant with Phillips Fox Melbourne in its health law team, and a partner of Darvall McCutcheon (which merged with Philips Fox in 1993).

Elizabeth specialises in health and medical law. She deals on a daily basis with a wide range of health professionals and hospitals and their issues. She has written many legal articles on health and medical topics.

She is Chair of the Appeals Committee, The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Elizabeth is also a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine and a Sessional tutor in the Department of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University.

Adjunct A/Prof Warwick Lee

Warwick is the State Radiologist for BreastScreen NSW and Adjunct Associate Professor, Discipline of Medical Radiation Sciences, University of Sydney. He has been involved with BreastScreen - NSW for over 20 years in a clinical and training capacity. He is a member of the Breast Imaging Reference Group of the RANZCR and the National Quality Management Committee of BreastScreen Australia and is a Past President of the Australasian Society for Breast Disease.

Carole Renouf

Carole Renouf’s career spans over 20 years in the non-profit sector. Graduating with an MA Hons in English and a Diploma in Education, she spent her early years teaching at secondary and tertiary levels in Australia and Europe. A growing interest in the health field led her into health education, initially with NSW Health where she set up the first Australian national conference on HIV/AIDS and healthy lifestyle resources for seniors. This was followed by the establishment of her own consultancy, with clients and jobs as varied as producing corporate materials for Textile Industries Australia and stories for the Series 6 of the hit science and technology program, Beyond 2000. Subsequently, Carole joined the Australian Consumers’ Association (publishers of CHOICE magazine and www.choice.com.au), initially as a journalist and then as a senior policy officer and media spokesperson. Carole’s policy specialisation was food and health and during ten years with the ACA she led the consumer campaign against genetically modified food and pioneered the first Australian consensus conference, which saw the establishment of the gene technology regulator.

David Roder

Until March 2011 I headed the Cancer Council South Australia research section. I was also employed under contract as a specialist epidemiologist to the NSW Cancer Institute (since 2004), National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre (since 2005), and Cancer Australia (since 2007), with additional consultancies with WHO in Mongolia, Malaysia and Indonesia, and with the Malaysian and New Zealand Governments.

I presently Chair the National Cervical Cancer Safety Monitoring Committee and the NSW Cancer Institute Screening Advisory Committee, and have been a member of the National Quality and Management Committee of BreastScreen Australia since 1995. I was a member of the National BreastScreen Evaluation Committee in 2007-2009 which undertook a systematic review of the BreastScreen Program.

I have authored approximately 180 peer-reviewed research publications and have been an invited presenter of scientific papers and/or chaired sessions at international scientific meetings in Australia, NZ, the UK, USA, Africa, NZ, Mongolia, Japan and a number of South East Asian countries. Awards have included a Member of the Order of Australia in 2000 for contributions to cancer epidemiology, cancer registration and research.

Clair L Shadbolt

MBChB, FRANZCR

Clair obtained her medical degree and general radiology training in New Zealand and UK.

Clair undertook 2 Fellowship years: in MRI at University of California and Body MRI at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, NYC.

She works in Melbourne at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Alfred and Royal Women’s Hospitals with subspecialty Body/Breast MRI interest.

Clair helped set up the PMCC Breast MRI high risk screening service and was in the successful Australian Breast MRI working party gaining the screening MRI Medicare rebate. She has authored several journal articles, been an invited speaker and presented scientific papers at local and international radiology meetings.

Dr Linda West

Dr Linda West trained in diagnostic radiology at the Alfred and Royal Children’s Hospitals in Melbourne, and completed her training at King’s College Hospital in London. She then worked as a specialist radiologist at The Maudsley and Atkinson-Morley Hospitals in London.

Since returning to Australia, she has been based in Geelong Victoria. She is a full-time breast imaging radiologist, and has been Director of Geelong and Southwest BreastScreen since its inception in 1992. She is a site accreditor for BreastScreen Victoria. Linda is a Visiting Medical Specialist to Geelong Hospital and teaches medical students and registrars for Deakin and Melbourne Universities.

In 2008, Dr West undertook fellowship training in breast MRI at the SCCA, University of Washington School of Medicine.

She is currently also director of the Geelong Breast Clinic for Lake Imaging.

Neil Wetzig

Neil Wetzig is Senior Visiting Breast Surgeon at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane and designated surgeon for BreastScreen Brisbane South. He is a member of the BreastScreen Queensland Quality Management Committee and previously served on the National Management and Accreditation Committees. His career in Breast Cancer Screening commenced in the UK in the 1986 when he worked at the Guildford Screening Service, one of the pilot programmes established by the UK Government.

In addition he is also Co Chair of the RACS SNAC Trials and chaired the NBOCC Committee that developed “Recommendations for Sentinel Node Biopsy in Early Operable Breast Cancer”.

Lou Williamson

Lou Williamson has nearly 35 years experience working in the health industry and has a Masters Degree in Health Service Management.

For the last 11 years she has been the General Manager, BreastScreen SA.

In this time she has participated on a variety of national working parties and committees with many of them relating to policy development and quality improvement.

In 2004, Lou was invited by the Department of Health and Ageing to chair the BreastScreen Australia National Quality Management Committee and she considers this to be a career highlight. Lou continues in this role today.

Lou chaired the working group that was tasked with the development of digital mammography accreditation standards and is currently on the BreastScreen Australia Accreditation Review Committee.

Clinical Associate Professor Elizabeth Jane Wylie

Dr Wylie trained in medicine at the University of Western Australia. Liz completed her resident years at Royal Perth Hospital and trained in radiology at Royal Perth Hospital.

Since 1990, Liz has worked as a consultant radiologist at Royal Perth Hospital and BreastScreen WA. Liz has been the Medical Director of BreastScreen WA since March 2000. Liz has been the Head of the Diagnostic & Interventional Radiology Department at Royal Perth Hospital since 2007. Liz is the convenor of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists Breast Imaging Reference Group.

Dr Helen Zorbas

Chief Executive Officer
MBBS FASBP MAICD

Dr Helen Zorbas is CEO of Cancer Australia. Helen has been responsible for directing a number of national cancer control initiatives to improve evidence-based practice, policy and health service delivery, in both the clinical and psycho-social aspects of cancer care. Helen has held a number of positions on key national cancer and Government health committees most notably Chair, BreastScreen Australia Evaluation Advisory Committee; member, NHMRC Health Advisory Committee; Chair, Australian Screening Advisory Committee, Quality Improvement & Workforce Working Group; and Chair, Microwave Cancer Review Committee of the NHMRC. She is currently a member, of the Health Care Committee NHMRC and the Expert Reference Group on Cancer Treatments NHMRC.