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Dr Barbara Starfield  > >  Dr Neale Fong > >  Professor Gavin Mooney > > Professor Hal Swerissen > > Professor Fiona Wood

	Dr Barbara Starfield MD MPH Barbara Starfield, a physician and health services researcher, is university distinguished  professor and professor of health policy and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University.  She is internationally known for her work in primary care; her books, Primary Care:  Concept, Evaluation, and Policy and Primary Care: Balancing Health Needs, Services, and Technology, are widely recognized as the seminal works in the field.  She has been instrumental in leading projects to develop important methodological tools, including the Primary Care Assessment Tool, the CHIP tools (to assess adolescent and child health status), and the Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups (ACGs) for assessment of diagnosed morbidity burdens reflecting degrees of  co-morbidity.   She was the co-founder and first president of the International Society for Equity in Health, a scientific organization devoted to furthering knowledge about the determinants of inequity in health and ways to eliminate them.  Her work thus focuses on quality of care, health status assessment, primary care evaluation, and equity in health. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and has been on its governing council, as well as on the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, and many other government and professional committees and groups. She has a BA from Swarthmore College, an MD from the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, and an MPH from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.
	Dr Neale Fong Dr Neale Fong is currently the Acting Director General for the Department of Health in Western Australia, appointed in November 2004.  He is also the Executive Chairman of the Health Reform Implementation Taskforce (HRIT).   He was appointed to his substantive position of Executive Chairman HRIT and Chief Executive of the North Metropolitan Area Health Service by the Minister for Health on 2 August 2004. Dr Fong's key duties include implementing the recommendations adopted in March 2004 by the State Government of the Health Reform Committee's final report and providing the Department of Health with the necessary leadership, guidance and support during the reform process. The State Government has made a commitment of $1.7 billion of capital funding to implement reform across the public health system. Prior to joining the Department of Health, Dr Fong was the Chief Executive Officer of St John of God Health Care Subiaco from October 1998. One of Australia's largest private hospitals, Subiaco employs 1500 staff and has 600 accredited visiting medical specialists and is one of the busiest hospitals in the sector with over 40,000 admissions in 2002/03.
	Professor Gavin Mooney Gavin Mooney is Director of the Social and Public Health Economics Research Group (SPHERe), Professor of Health Economics at Curtin University in Perth, Australia and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Health and Humanity at Aarhus University (Denmark). He is also co-convenor of the WA Social Justice Network. Gavin has over 200 publications in health economics. He is the director of an online international course in health economics and of the first ever Masters course in Aboriginal Health Economics. He has a strong interest in equity in health care, particularly with respect to Aboriginal health. Gavin has worked as an adviser on many occasions for WHO and OECD and for various governments and health departments. He has also researched into various aspects of primary care, particularly remuneration systems for GPs. He believes that it is important in the context of GP divisions to find out what citizens want from the social institution that is General Practice. He also believes that any good health service has to be built on a sound General Practice sector. In recent years he has become particularly interested in communitarianism and using this philosophy in the economics of health care, especially with respect to equity. Gavin hails from a health professional background. His brother is a GP, his niece also heading for a career as a GP, his mother was a nurse and his father claimed to have a First Aid Certificate from the Boys' Brigade. Gavin has no such health professional qualifications but has been a health economist for over 30 years.
	Professor Hal Swerissen Professor Hal Swerissen was Director of the Australian Institute for Primary Care, Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University. He has extensive experience in health and community services research and consultancy. He has been a senior policy adviser to the Commonwealth Government on health and community services, including: primary care and disability services; health insurance and financing and Commonwealth-State relations. He has also been an advisor to the Victorian Government on community services, including: disability services and the Home and Community Care program. Professor Swerissen has conducted a number of public consultations on health, aged care, disability and acute care services for government.  Professor Swerissen was one of the key designers of the Commonwealth COAG health reform process and an architect of the coordinated care trials. He has been a member of Board of the Moreland Community Health Service and is past president of the Victorian Healthcare Association community health division. He has published more than 60 books, articles, reports and conference papers on health and community services policy and programs.
	Professor Fiona Wood In October 2002 Western Australia's only female plastic surgeon, Clinical Professor Fiona Wood caught the attention of the Australian public when the Royal Perth burns unit was overwhelmed with 28 burns victims from the Bali bombing. Today this 46-year-old mother of six explains in her still detectable Yorkshire accent that her drive and enormous energy comes from loving what she does. She has been well known and respected in her field of burns internationally and locally for many years.  She is a leading scientist in the field of tissue engineering and has published widely in the area.  Through the company Clinical Cell Culture (C3) that she co-founded with scientist Marie Stoner she has developed a product called CellSpray, better known as 'sprayon -skin'. Since her public notoriety after the 2002 Bali bombing she has been acknowledged with numerous awards and accolades. In 2003 she was awarded the order of Australia and the Australian Medical Association Award for her contribution to medicine. In 2004 she became West Australian of the Year and was added to the register of Australian National Treasures. She received the Dr Michael Chan Humanitarian Award 2004 and has been nominated for Citizen of the Year. In 2005 she was bestowed with the Australian of the Year Award, which she says is a great honour has been very humbling. It has introduced another set of challenges and the opportunity to spread her message of how, "we should not rely on the intellect of one leader but the integrity of all." Her warmth, openness and relating stories of human tragedy seem to form the basis of her universal appeal. She has so far managed to pack so much into her life that most people would find hard to imagine. Understandably life as a surgeon, a scientist and a busy mother has left little time to contemplate future directions. As life has become more hectic she has had to make decisions of where she is heading now. Her public profile created through her work during the Bali tragedy has given her the opportunity to have her voice heard and she doesn't want to waste it. "We need to facilitate the best in people, particularly in our own kids and to explore their potential." This is the message she believes passionately in.

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