Tahmina Begum is a medical graduate with a Master’s in Public Health. She received her doctoral award from the University of Queensland in July 2022. Her PhD research project was on Caesarean section birth and its impact on maternal and offspring health in Australia. Prior to joining her PhD program, she had fourteen years of experience in obstetric patient management and implementation research in maternal and child health care in Bangladesh. She is a mixed-method researcher with a major research interest in improving the quality of health care, non-communicable disease prevention, management of health information systems, and improving access to health services for refugee and underprivileged populations. The process from research to policy communication is her prime focus, and she has had the privilege to serve on national technical advisory committees on quality of health care improvement in Bangladesh and in an international technical advisory group on the private sector in Health.
Jacqueline A Boyle is an Associate Professor and an academic obstetrician/gynecologist. She has a clinical appointment at Monash Health and is the Head of the Health Systems and Equity Directorate at Eastern Health Clinical School. Her research is in women's public health and health services research to improve women's health across the life course, with equity in health literacy, health access, and health outcomes being a priority. She has published 233 papers with 6976 citations and an h-index of 35 (Scopus, 4 December 2023). Her research topics mainly include women's health, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, public health reproductive health, and migrant and refugee health.
Professor James Ward is a Pitjantjatjara and Nukunu man, an infectious diseases epidemiologist and a national leader in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. He is currently the Director of the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health at The University of Queensland.
Holding various roles over the last 25 years in Aboriginal public health policy for both government and non-government organisations, in urban regional and remote communities he has built a national program of research in the epidemiology and prevention of infectious diseases, with a particular focus on STIs, HIV and viral hepatitis in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Professor Ward has previously worked at the Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales, Baker IDI in Alice Springs and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute. He has served on numerous national and international committees including the Communicable Diseases Network of Australia, the Australian National Council on Alcohol and Drugs, the CDNA COVID-19 Working Group and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander COVID-19 Taskforce. He has over 140 publications and leads several large scale public health and infectious diseases studies.
Federica Barzi is an Associate Professor at The University of Queensland and a Principal Research Fellow in Biostatistics at the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health and within the Faculty of Health and Behavioral Sciences at The University of Queensland. She was awarded a Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Sydney University in 2004 and has a BS degree in Statistics from the University of Padova, Italy. She is an applied biostatistician with extensive experience in study design and data analysis of randomized clinical trials, very large observational studies, and data linkage. She has worked across a variety of specialties including cardiology, nephrology, nutrition, oncology, and emergency care. She has been involved in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health since 2005, and from April 2014, she has held an appointment at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin. Her research topics mainly include biostatics, epidemiology, diabetes, health services delivery, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research.
