Professor Karen Sliwa

Speaker sponsored by

and Heart Foundation
Professor Karen Sliwa, MD, PHD, FESC, DTM&H, is the director of the Soweto Cardiovascular Research Unit, Department of Cardiology, Baragwanath Hospital, University of the Witwatersrand. For the last 10 years her main focus of research has related to immune activation and left ventricular remodelling in idiopathic and Peripartum Cardiomyopathy (heart failure). More recently, Karen initiated and currently leads a large collaborative project, The Heart of Soweto Study ( The Lancet 2008), to better understand the emergence of heart disease in Africa’s largest community of Black Africans in epidemiological transition. This involves a large cardiac registry capturing more than 9000 patients from Soweto and community focused awareness and intervention programs.  As part of research program, Karen established strong collaborations with a range of prestigious national and international clinical and academic centers. This includes Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town; Maputo University, Mozambique; Hannover University, Germany; University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia ( Adjunct professor), and The Baker Institute, Melbourne Australia.

Professor Sidney C. Smith

Professor Sidney C. Smith, Jr., M.D. is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Science and Medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. At the 2008 World Congress of Cardiology he was elected to serve as President-Elect of the World Heart Federation frzaom2009-2011. He has been appointed to serve as Chair for the NHLBI Integrated Guidelines for Cardiovascular Disease and has authored or co-authored more than 280 published papers and chapters and serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Cardiology, Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Circulation.

Professor K. Srinath Reddy

Professor K. Srinath Reddy is presently President, Public Health Foundation of India and until recently headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). He is a clinical cardiologist, also trained in epidemiology (at McMaster University, Canada), and has a career commitment to preventive cardiology and public health.  Prof. Reddy was awarded the WHO Director General’s Award for Global Leadership in Tobacco Control at the 56th World Health Assembly in May 2003. Professor Reddy has been active in organizing school based health education programmes, under the HRIDAY-SHAN programme which he initiated in 1992. HRIDAY has won international recognition for its innovative programmes of health awareness and advocacy and was awarded the WHO Global Tobacco Free World Award in 2002.  It has been recommended by WHO as a model programme, to be replicated in other countries. He recently organized the first ever Global Youth Meet on Health (GYM 2006) in New Delhi and facilitated the launch of the Youth For Health (Y4H) global network for health advocacy and action.

Professor Jagat Narula

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Professor Narula is involved in clinical and basic research in the fields of heart failure and atherosclerosis, with major emphasis on development of novel noninvasive imaging techniques. He has made vital contributions to the imaging of apoptotic cell death in heart muscle, and to the imaging of atherosclerotic plaques that are vulnerable to rupture. His research is not limited by any one imaging modality; rather, Professor Narula uses integrated imaging approaches for better identification of cardiovascular pathology.

Professor Narula has authored more than 300 research publications and edited 20 books and journal supplements. He serves on various committees of the American Heart Association. He has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Editor of Heart Failure Clinics of North America.

Professor Jonathan Carapetis

As Director of Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, Professor Jonathan Carapetis is promoting new directions in research and training to tackle big problems in Indigenous health, including education, housing and poverty.  He is a paediatrician, infectious diseases and public health physician, with particular expertise in group A streptococcal diseases, vaccines and vaccine preventable diseases, and health of children in Indigenous communities and developing countries.

His work on controlling rheumatic heart disease and in developing new vaccine strategies is known internationally.  His research into rheumatic fever in the Aboriginal population translated into the establishment of Australia’s first rheumatic heart disease control program in the Top End.  He continues to run a program of research and public health interventions in rheumatic fever in both Australia and globally, and has been involved in the development of a national RHD strategy in Australia.  Professor Carapetis is Chairman of the World Heart Federation Scientific Council on Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease and has written the rheumatic fever chapters for a number of textbooks including Harrison’s Textbook of Internal Medicine, the Oxford Textbook of Medicine, Hurst’s The Heart, and Infectious Diseases (ed Cohen and Powderly).  He also chaired the writing group for the National Heart Foundation of Australia and Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand guidelines for management and control of rheumatic heart disease.

Professor Carapetis was named as 2008 Northern Territory Australian of the year and selected as one of Australia’s 100 smartest people and one of the top ten in Medicine and Health in the Bulletin Magazine’s “Smart 100” list in 2007.   

Professor Philip Barter

Philip Barter is director of The Heart Research Institute, in Sydney, Australia and is also a Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney. He previously held the National Heart Foundation-W H Knapman Chair of Cardiology at the University of Adelaide. He graduated in medicine form the University of Adelaide and gained his PhD from the Australian National University. He is a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He has previously held positions in research institutes and universities in Australia and the US. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Task Force for Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease and Secretary of the International Atherosclerosis Society. He is also an executive board member of the International Chair on Cardiometabolic Risk. His basic research interests are plasma lipids and lipoproteins, specifically high density lipoproteins, the factors that regulate them and the mechanism by which they protect against cardiovascular disease. His clinical research involves participation in clinical trials of lipid-lowering agents. He is a member of the steering committee of the TNT Study and is chairman of the steering committee of the recently concluded ILLUMINATE. He has published more than 200 research papers on plasma lipids and lipoproteins, their metabolism, regulation, function and relationship to atherosclerosis.

Professor Adrian Bauman

Adrian has a medical background, but has been in public health for 25 years. He is an internationally recognised expert on physical activity and health, with a  focus on chronic disease prevention. His research interests are in the epidemiology of physical activity and health, physical activity measurement and surveillance and evaluating interventions [and mass media campaigns] to increase physical activity and improve healthy lifestyles at the population level. He has a strong interest in broad multi-sectoral and international approaches to promoting health, and has worked as an advisor to WHO, CDC and many national level agencies. He coordinates the Asia Pacific Physical Activity Network, and co-leads {with the Heart Foundation},  the national level network, AusPAnet. He has served on the NSW Heart Foundation Board (1999-2005), and Chaired the Heart Foundation National Physical Activity Committee (1998-2004). He has an ongoing commitment to training practitioners and researchers in physical activity and in health promotion, especially in developing countries. His other research interests and research funding support are in behavioural epidemiology, diabetes and obesity prevention, social disadvantage and health, and evaluating health promotion and social marketing health-related interventions.

Professor Roger Boyle

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Roger Boyle qualified from the London Hospital Medical College in 1972 and trained in cardiology In London, Manchester and Leeds. He was appointed in 1983 as consultant cardiologist in York where he had long experience as a Clinical Director for General Medicine and also as a General Manager. Roger Boyle has been a member of the Council of the British Cardiac Society since 1991 and was formerly Chairman of the Specialty Advisory Committee for Cardiology at the Royal College of Physicians. He was a member of the External Reference Group for the National Service Framework for CHD and Chairman of the Focus Group on acute presentations. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and of the European Society of Cardiology. He was appointed as National Director for Heart Disease (‘Heart Tsar’) at the Department of Health in March 2000. He took on responsibility for Stroke in January 2006.

Professor Kerin O'Dea

Kerin O’Dea is a nutrition scientist and public health researcher who has made major contributions to understanding the relationship between diet and chronic diseases, particularly type 2 diabetes and related conditions.
She is best known nationally and internationally for her work on:

* The impact of diet and lifestyle change on risk of type 2 diabetes in Australian Aborigines, with a focus on the therapeutic and preventive implications;
* The epidemiology of diabetes and related conditions in Indigenous Australian populations;
* The role of diet in the aetiology, treatment and prevention of type 2 diabetes;
* Factors affecting the metabolic responses to carbohydrates; and
* Improving population health through improving the nutritional quality of the food supply.

She is currently a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. She was previously Director of the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin (2000-5). She has been active for many years on numerous committees advising governments on health research, nutrition, Indigenous health and diabetes. Key current committees include NHMRC’s Research Committee and the National Indigenous Health Equality Council. In early 2009 she will take up a new appointment as Director of the Sansom Institute at the University of South Australia in Adelaide.

Professor Paul Zimmet

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Professor Zimmet has an outstanding international record in diabetes and obesity research, particularly in the field of epidemiology and molecular biology. He was the Foundation Director of the International Diabetes Institute which merged with the Baker Heart Research Institute in July 2008. He is now Director Emeritus of and Director of International Research for the baker IDI heart and Diabetes Institute. In 2008, he was appointed to the Federal Government Preventative Health Taskforce.

His research in Australian, Pacific and Indian Ocean populations provided new insights into the genetic and environmental and behavioural determinants of type 2 diabetes. These studies also brought to attention the global epidemic of diabetes. He led the team for the first ever national diabetes and obesity study in Australia (AusDiab) in 2000. He has published over 650 scientific papers, chapters and reviews. He is Co-editor of the widely used text on diabetes - International Textbook of Diabetes Mellitus and is also Co-editor of The Epidemiology of Diabetes.

He has received many international and national awards including the Kelly West and Harold Rifkin Medals from the ADA, the IDF Eli Lilly Award, the AM Cohen Award and UNESCO/Hellmut Mehnert Award Lectures of the EASD, the inaugural Peter Bennett Diabetes Epidemiology Award for outstanding contributions to research on the epidemiology of diabetes, the Kellion Award, Australian Diabetes Society, the Banting Award Lecture, Diabetes UK, the Charles Best Oration, Canada and in 2007, he received the global Novartis Award for long standing contributions in the field of diabetes.

He has been a member of numerous WHO, international and national committees addressing the issue of diabetes, obesity and nutrition. In 1993, he received the Order of Australia (AM), and in 2001, he was further honoured with the “Order of Australia” (AO) for services to medical research of national and international significance.

Professor Rob Moodie

Rob Moodie is Professor of Global Health at the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne. Between 1998 and 2007 he was the CEO of VicHealth. He is the Chair of the National Preventative Health Task Force.

Since 1979 he has worked for Save the Children Fund, Medicins Sans Frontieres, Congress, the Aboriginal Health Service in Alice Springs, the Burnet Institute and for the World Health Organization, and the joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Rob chairs the Technical Panel to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s HIV prevention program in India. He also chairs the Melbourne Storm Rugby League Club.

He is married to Anne, a physiotherapist and they have two children Nick 23 and Penny 21. He writes regularly in the media and is co-editor/author of four books, including Hands on Health Promotion. His most recent book is Recipes for a Great Life written with Gabriel Gate.

Professor David Clarke

David Clarke first practiced as a general practitioner before training in psychiatry. He works at the interface between psychiatry and physical health care as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist. He is currently Clinical Director of General Hospital and Primary Care Psychiatry at Monash Medical Centre and Southern Health. He is also the Research Advisor for beyondblue. He is heavily involved in both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education at Monash University. His research has been in the area of psychiatric disturbance in the medically ill, particularly depression.

Associate Professor Karam Kostner

Dr Karam Kostner is a clinical lipidologist and cardiologist. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Queensland, Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Australia.

He is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Dr Kostner has published numerous clinical papers, review articles and book chapters. He serves in editorial review capacity for several distinguished journals and acts as an advisory board member for several multinational companies.