2014 Australasian Sexual Health Conference
 

Keynote Speakers
David Lewis

David is Director of the Western Sydney Sexual Health Centre and Professor at the University of Sydney.  Until recently, he held the position of Head of the Centre for HIV and STIs at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa.  His research interests focus on gonorrhoea, genital ulcer disease, outreach STI services and men’s sexual health.  He serves at the current President of the International Union against STIs (IUSTI).  He is a Deputy Editor for Sexually Transmitted Infections and also a Joint Editor for Sexual Health.  He frequently assists the World Health Organization as a Technical Advisor in matters related to STI treatment guidelines, the proposed 2016-2025 STI strategy, point-of-care diagnostic tests and the Gonococcal Antimicrobial Susceptibility Programme.  Outside of work, David is an avid photographer and traveller.  David Lewis will be presenting the Gollow Lecture this year titled "The many facets of Haemophilus ducreyi infection: a multidisciplinary look at an evolving pathogen".
Kaye Wellings


 Kaye Wellings is the Head of the Department of Social and Environmental Health Research (SEHR). A social scientist with a public health perspective, her main area of interest, and one in which she has worked for more than 20 years, is sexual and reproductive health. Kaye was one of the founders, in 1987, of the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) in Britain and a Principal Investigator on the first (1990), second (2000), and third (2010) surveys. She has lead a team of academics researching sexual and reproductive risk behaviour and risk reduction practice, including contraception, at national and international level. Kaye also has a strong interest in evaluation research, particularly in relation to preventive intervention and she has assessed major national and international sexual health programmes, including AIDS preventive strategies in European countries and the English government’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy. Much of Kaye’s working life has been spent researching sensitive topics, including not only sexual behaviour but also risk practices relating to drug use and in prison populations. Kaye Wellings is an honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (ad eundem), and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health.
Karen Canfell


 Associate Professor Karen Canfell is an epidemiologist specialising in cancer screening. She obtained her D.Phil. from the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford. She now leads the Cancer Modelling Group at the Lowy Cancer Research Centre at UNSW and also chairs Cancer Council Australia’s screening advisory committee. A focus of her research is the interplay between HPV vaccination and cervical screening in both developed countries and in low resource settings, and her group regularly perform evaluations of new cervical screening and diagnostic strategies for national government agencies in Australia, New Zealand and England. Her group performed the effectiveness modelling and economic evaluation for a major new national review ('Renewal') of cervical screening in Australia, and also recently performed a similar evaluation in England. Karen is also co-PI of Compass, a major new trial of cervical screening in the HPV-vaccinated population in Australia which is being performed through the Victorian Cytology Service 
Juliet Richters


 Juliet Richters is Professor in Sexual Health in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. She has worked for 30 years in sexual health research and education, doing national surveys of sexual behaviour and attitudes, in-depth interview studies, and theoretical work. As well as leading the Sex in Australia national telephone sex survey project, she is currently researching women’s experiences of contraception in relation to their sexual lives.

Jodi McKay

Jodi McKay is the Director of Communications, Government and Community Affairs for Family Planning NSW, the leading non-government provider of reproductive and sexual health services in NSW.  Her executive role with Family Planning NSW involves advocating reproductive and sexual health policy at the highest levels of government. 
Jodi is a former member of the NSW Parliament and in her time in government held eight ministerial portfolios including Women, Science and Medical Research, Tourism and Commerce. She had oversight of agencies including the Office for Women’s Policy, Office for Science and Medical Research, Cancer Institute NSW and the NSW Chief Scientist. Jodi is a former journalist and corporate affairs director. She was instrumental in establishing the Hunter Medical Research Institute, one of the leading medical research institutes in Australia, and was a member of the University of Newcastle’s research commercialisation association. 
She is currently a director of Epilepsy Action Australia and Australian Science Innovations.  She is the NSW representative on the national steering committee of Safe Schools Coalition Australia and a member of the International Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Consortium.  
She is completing a Masters in Public Administration at the University of Sydney.