Professor Richard Franklin - Convenor

Injury Prevention Special Interest Group Co-Convenor, Public Health Association of Australia; Professor for Public Health  - Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, James Cook University

​Professor Franklin PhD FPHAA, FACTM, FARL is Director of the World Safety Organization (WSO) Collaborating Centre for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences, James Cook University, Australia.  Prof Franklin is a public health pracademic who uses an evidence based approach to developing real world solutions for improving health, safety and wellbeing of people with a focus on rural and tropical populations.  He has worked on a range of projects with an emphasis on drowning prevention, farm safety, workplace health and safety, rural road safety, masculinity, alcohol & drugs, and disasters.   He teaches into the Masters of Public Health around foundation public health topics, public health in the workplace, and public health management. He also supervises a range of masters and doctorate students in public health and injury prevention.  He has been involved in the development of a range of strategies to prevent injuries and is the current Co-Convenor of the Injury Prevention Special Interest Group of the Public Health Association of Australia, a past president of the Austrasian Injury Prevention Network (AIPN) and current board member of Farmsafe and Kidsafe.

Adjunct Professor Terry Slevin

CEO, Public Health Association of Australia

Terry Slevin has been Chief Executive Office for the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) since May 2018.  He is Adjunct Professor in the School of Psychology at Curtin University an Adjunct Professor in the College of Health and Medicine at the Australian National University.  He is a Fellow of PHAA and was the first Vice President (Development) of the Association.​

Adj Prof Slevin is a regular media commentator on all aspects of public health and cancer, ranging from causes and early detection, to broader chronic disease prevention including nutrition, physical activity, weight control, alcohol, sun protection and gun control.  He also has a special interest in Occupational and environmental cancer risks.

Until April 2018 he was Director, Education and Research at Cancer Council WA where he worked since 1994. Adj Prof Slevin holds a Masters in Public Health and an Honours degree in Psychology.​

As well as serving as Chair of Cancer Council Australia’s Occupational and Environmental Cancer Risk Committee, Adj Prof Slevin has previously chaired Cancer Council's Skin Cancer Committee and was founding Chair of Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee, where he served for 10 years.  He has contributed to the planning of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) World Cancer Congress from 2012 to 2016 and was Co Chair of the Scientific Committee for the World Cancer Congress in Kuala Lumpur in 2018.​

He is the editor of a book on skin cancer Sun, Skin and Health, released by CSIRO Publishing in 2014 and has published over 70 papers in the peer reviewed literature and a series of 15 articles on cancer myths.  

His current focus is on promoting evidence based public health policy in Australia with a focus on equity and improved health outcomes for the most disadvantaged Australians.

Dr Amy Peden

Lecturer, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney

Amy is a lecturer and researcher at UNSW Sydney. Her research explores injury prevention with a focus on drowning prevention and the intersecting issues of rurality, alcohol and exposure. Amy holds adjunct positions with James Cook University, The George Institute for Global Health and is a Senior Research Fellow with Royal Life Saving Society – Australia. Amy is an early career researcher whose PhD, which explored the epidemiology, risk factors and prevention strategies for unintentional river drowning, was awarded in 2019. Her PhD programme of research was awarded the Sax Institute Research Action Award in 2019, the 2020 Dean’s Award for Higher Degree by Research Excellence and also in 2020 was also acknowledged as the Council of Academic Public Health Institutions in Australia (CAPHIA) Award winner for PhD Excellence in Public Health. Amy is a member of the Australasian Injury Prevention Network executive.

Associate Professor  Ben Beck

President, Australasian Injury Prevention Network (AIPN), Head of Sustainable Mobility and Safety Research at Monash University, Australia

Associate Professor Ben Beck is Head of Sustainable Mobility and Safety Research in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine (SPHPM) at Monash University and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Ben leads an interdisciplinary team that brings together experts in injury prevention, public health, road safety, urban and transport planning, and engineering. Ben is the elected President of the Australasian Injury Prevention Network; the peak body for injury prevention in Australia and New Zealand.

Mr Xin Li

HSE Systems Assurance and Reporting Manager, CSIRO;

Executive, Australasian University Safety Association

Xin Li is the HSE Systems Assurance and Reporting Manager at CSIRO and is an Executive of the Australasian University Safety Association. Xin has worked broadly in Australian universities, holding roles as an academic, in management, and working as a WHS professional. As a leader in WHS in the Higher Education and Research sector across the Australasian region, Xin promotes the system thinking and approach to injury prevention and safety promotion from a work safety perspective utilising technological innovation, research translation, WHS professional, and industry-wide action as tools to achieve a safer future for workers in Australia and worldwide. Xin’s involvement in World Safety 2020 commenced in 2016 as a member of the National Bidding Committee where he worked closely with PHAA and Adelaide Convention Bureau to attract the conference to Adelaide.

Professor Cathie Sherrington

Professor, The University of Sydney, Institute for Musculoskeletal Health

Professor Cathie Sherrington is an Professor at the Institute for Musculoskeletal Health, School of Public Health, The University of Sydney. She leads the Physical Activity, Ageing and Disability Research Stream within the Institute which is also supported by the Sydney Local Health District. Prior to completing a PhD and Masters of Public Heath, Cathie was a physiotherapist in aged care and rehabilitation settings.

Mr Craig Schopp

Director & Principal Consultant, Choose Safety Pty Ltd

Craig has a 30-year history of working in OHS/WHS across Australia and is the director of Safety Consultancy company, Choose Safety Pty Ltd. He provides safety and management systems development, implementation, auditing, training and advice to a wide range of companies both large and small across Australia, and has worked in virtually all industry sectors.

Craig’s wider background and experience in manufacturing, quality management and also production/process engineering also enable him to assist with development and implementation of integrated management systems, as well as the simplification or “de-cluttering” of safety systems.

Craig has a Masters Degree in OHS and is a Chartered OHS Professional and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety (formerly Safety Institute of Australia). Craig is also the immediate past chair of the SA Branch of the AIHS, a position he held for 7 years, and is still an active committee member on the South Australian branch committee.

Dr Lauren Fortington

Senior Research Fellow

​Dr Lauren Fortington is an injury prevention and sports safety researcher at Edith Cowan University, WA. Lauren’s research aims to support active Australians to participate safely in sport, work and everyday activity. Current research is focused on injury surveillance in professional rugby, combat sport and defence force personnel as well as management and prevention of serious injury and fatalities in community sport including spinal cord injury, concussion, and sudden cardiac arrest. She is on the Editorial Board of Science and Medicine in Football and serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport and the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Mr Rob McInerney

Chief Executive Officer, iRAP

Rob is the Chief Executive Officer for the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), a registered charity with the vision for a world free of high-risk roads. With RAP projects and programmes now active in over 70 countries worldwide, Rob works closely with key automobile club, political and technical leaders to build local capacity and deliver large-scale and long-term road safety benefits through the provision of safer road infrastructure as part of their RAP programs.

Keziah Bennett-Brook

Program Lead, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Program

Keziah is a Torres Strait Islander woman, Program Lead of The George Institute’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Program, Indigenous representative on the Australasian Injury Prevention Network Executive and Board Member of Hepatitis NSW.  Keziah Chairs the Research Committee for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and as an established lead of a research program, leads the development and implementation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health strategy and policy, stakeholder partnerships and Indigenous research coordination within a global research institute. Keziah has extensive experience in social and cultural determinants of health research, Indigenous methodologies, and a keen interest in knowledge translation and impact measurement that privilege Indigenous knowledges, as well as applying decolonising methods to organisational and systems change.

Mr Justin Scarr

Chief Executive Officer, Royal Life Saving Society

Justin Scarr is the Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Life Saving Society in Australia, Chair of the Australian Water Safety Council, and past convenor of the ILS World Conference on Drowning Prevention. Justin is a leading advocate in the development of drowning prevention across the Asia-Pacific for over 15 years. He has been the technical advisor to Drowning Prevention Initiatives in Bangladesh, Thailand and Vietnam. Justin advocates a focus on the global issues of drowning prevention, and has contributed to the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Report on Drowning, Implementation guide and Guideline development processes. Justin is also PhD scholar at The George Institute for Global Health’s Injury Prevention Division where he is investigating policy, planning and multisectoral action in the context of global drowning prevention.

Dr Rebecca Lilley

Senior Research Fellow, Department of Preventive and Social Medicine

Dr Rebbecca Lilley (PhD) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Injury Prevention Research Unit, Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago. She has over 22 years’ experience in academic research to inform injury prevention providing insight into safety systems in the New Zealand context.  Her current research interests focus on injury-related topics including: pre-hospital care and trauma outcomes, access to emergency medical services, work-related injury and the use of administrative data for injury surveillance. Dr Lilley is a member of the Interagency Injury Information Working Group led by Statistics New Zealand.  Dr Lilley has experience in governance, currently holding the role of Director of Research Strategy, Department of Preventive and Social Medicine and is regularly invited to external stakeholder groups to inform the development of injury prevention policy and strategies.

Associate Professor Janneke Berecki

Director of the Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit, Monash University Accident Research Centre

Janneke Berecki is an associate professor at the Monash University Accident Research Centre, where she is the Director of the Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit. Janneke studied Medicine at the University of Amsterdam where she also completed her PhD (cum laude). For over ten years Janneke has conducted injury research, with a focus on injury outcomes and injury epidemiology.  Janneke has designed and conducted several data linkage studies, including linkage of data sources such as injury compensation claims, Medicare and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme records, hospital admissions, Emergency Department presentations and cause of death data. Her research interests are injury surveillance, injury data quality, comorbidity and chronic disease, data linkage studies and pharmacoepidemiology.