Executive

  • Professor Ray Lovett is an Aboriginal (Wongaibon/Ngiyampaa) man from western NSW. Ray is a social epidemiologist with extensive experience in health research, public health policy development and evaluation, and is the Mayi Kuwayu Study Director in the National Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Wellbeing Research at the Australian National University. Prior to his research career, he was a health policy advisor in the Aboriginal health workforce. He has a clinical background as a registered nurse and Aboriginal health worker.

    Ray is recognised nationally for his work in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary health care research. His work includes integrating culture and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research ethics.

  • Lisa Whop is a Torres Strait Islander NHMRC Early Career Research Fellow and epidemiologist. She is Australia’s leading authority on cervical cancer control in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Her research program focuses on cervical cancer control (screening and vaccination) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. She is Chief investigator on the Centre for Research Excellence on Targeted Approaches To Improve Cancer Services (TACTICS) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians where so co-leads the Prevention and Screening stream and Principal Investigator on an ARC Discovery Indigenous grant focused on understanding the modifiable factors that influence uptake and completion of HPV vaccination for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adolescents. She brings research experience working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, creating meaningful ways of engagement and community empowerment within an Indigenist research approach to direct her program. She has special interests in achieving equity by process and outcomes in epidemiology, vaccine preventable disease and translation of research into policy and practice.

  • A/Prof Michelle Kennedy is a Wiradjuri woman, who has grown up on Worimi country. Her research is focussed on developing meaningful and culturally responsive smoking cessation programs to empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be smoke-free. Michelle is passionate about the design and implementation of ethical research in partnership with Aboriginal communities, particularly Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services.

  • Professor Catherine Chamberlain is a Palawa woman of the Trawlwoolway clan (Tasmania), registered midwife and public health researcher (PhD, MPH, MSc Public Health Practice, Graduate Certificates in Health Service Management and Indigenous Research and Leadership).

    She has over 25 years’ experience in the health sector, including leadership positions within academic institutions, government and health services.

Tobacco Free Team

  • Dr Raglan Maddox’s (Bagumani(Modewa) Clan, Papua New Guinea) leads the commercial Tobacco Free Program at Australian National University. Raglan’s program of research has focused on developing and analyzing population based Indigenous heath information using community driven processes, with a focus on commercial tobacco use. This research has been generating data to help better understand and improve Indigenous health and wellbeing outcomes.

  • Dr Christina Heris is a research fellow in the Tobacco Free Program at the National Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Wellbeing Research at the Australian National University with interests in health communications, tobacco control and adolescent health.

    Christina completed her PhD thesis Young Aboriginal People Staying Smoke-Free in 2020 at the University of Melbourne. She has previously worked in state and federal government agencies on the development and evaluation of health social marketing campaigns, including the National Tobacco Campaign, as well as teaching into tertiary health promotion, public health and health communications courses.

    Christina also collaborates on projects with the Centre of Research Excellence in Aboriginal Child and Adolescent Health (CRE REACH), the Centre of Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame (CREATE) and the Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future trauma-informed public health study.

  • Dean Pousini-Hilton is a science graduate from the University of Sydney majoring in applied medical science and immunology. Before joining Tobacco Free, Dean worked as a cardiac technologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and mentored Indigenous youth across Sydney. Dean is passionate about health inequity and is committed to help improve Indigenous health and wellbeing.

  • Shavaun Wells is a proud Taungurung woman. She has a passion for working with communities and two way learning between communities and researchers. The concept of improving Indigenous health, wellbeing and quality of life resonates with Shavaun and has influenced the roles, research and studies that she has undertaken. She is supportive of the idea that there will always be an important role for academics and health professionals to improve health and empower Indigenous communities.

    Shavaun has a Graduate Diploma in Indigenous Health Promotion and has worked in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health sector for 12 years, commencing as an Aboriginal Health Worker and continuing into a researcher role at the ANU.

  • Makayla Holz is an Administrate Assistant at the National Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Wellbeing Research helping the Tobacco Free team to research tobacco use among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Specialising in administration, Makayla uses her wide-range of office administration skills to assist the Tobacco Free team with any admin needs they have. Makayla is also studying for her Bachelor of Science in Psychology at the University of Canberra. In her free time Makayla enjoys gaming, spending time with friends and family and trying new cafes and restaurants

  • Andrew is a tobacco control policy and program specialist with over 20 years’ experience in the public sector at the national and state level. He has contributed to significant tobacco control policies and program implementation in Australia, including leading: policy development and program implementation for the Tackling Indigenous Smoking program from 2016 to 2020; development of the National Tobacco Strategy 2012-2018; national policy approaches for electronic cigarettes; and planning, implementation and evaluation of the seminal Arabic-speakers tobacco control project in southwest Sydney.

    Andrew is a PhD candidate at the Research School of Population Health, Australian National University/ affiliated with the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Achieving the Tobacco Endgame. His research focuses on policy issues and knowledge translation related to the tobacco endgame for Australia, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ perspectives on the tobacco endgame.

  • Dr Rohan Telford is a non-Indigenous researcher with a focus on improving health and wellbeing outcomes. Rohan has a background in information technology, physiology and public health and interest in program co-design, implementation and evaluation. Rohan works alongside the Tobacco Free team to understand the prevalence and impacts of commercial tobacco use among Indigenous people.

  • Dr. Daniel Odo is an early-career public health researcher, working in the National Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Wellbeing Research, ANU. He is currently working on tobacco and health in Australia, the Pacific and globally. Daniel studied his PhD in the University of Queensland (UQ), completed on January 2023 having joined UQ with an international scholarship. He has a multidisciplinary background spanning public health (MPH) and environmental health and Epidemiology (BSc & PhD). He has more than 10 years of teaching and research experience in public health, air pollution and climate change. He currently lives in Canberra, and if he is not at work, you can find him playing or walking with his wife and son.