The Centre for Research Excellence into Injecting Drug Use (CREIDU) is proud to host a one-day colloquium which will look at what’s new in hepatitis C and injecting drug use with a focus on prevention, treatment and care.
We are pleased to announce that the keynote speaker for the day will be Professor Frederick Altice, a professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Public Health and a clinician, clinical epidemiologist, interventionist and researcher at Yale University School of Medicine and School of Public Health.
Professor Frederick Altice’s primary research projects focuses on the interface between infectious diseases and substance use disorders. He also has a number of projects working in the criminal justice system, including transitional programs addressing infectious diseases, medication assisted therapies (methadone, buprenorphine, extended release naltrexone), mental illness and social instability.
Dr Natasha Martin is a mathematical and economic modeller, specializing in modelling hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission amongst people who inject drugs. Her research focusses on the impact and cost-effectiveness of HCV antiviral treatment for prevention, as well as HCV case-finding interventions. She is currently a NIHR Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bristol and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and completed her doctorate in mathematical biology in 2009 from Oxford University.
Professor Lisa Maher from the Kirby Institute, whose work focuses on ethnographic, epidemiological and clinical research on drug
use and related harms and studies of interventions designed to prevent infectious diseases in vulnerable populations, including people who inject drugs (PWID) and female sex workers.
Professor Margaret Hellard, Head of the Centre for Population Health at the Burnet Institute, where her work centres around infectious diseases, preventing their transmission and identifying the impact of these infections in vulnerable populations.
A researcher and clinician, her principal research interests are in the epidemiology of blood-borne viruses (HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C), sexually transmitted infections and improving the management of individuals who already have the infection.
Dr Julie Bruneau is a clinical researcher and Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Montreal. She holds a Senior clinical research Scholar of the Fonds de Recherche en Santé du Québec. As a clinician, she is recognized as a leader in the development of addiction medicine in Canada. She was a founding member of the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine, and implemented the largest University-based Addiction Medical Facility in Eastern Canada.
For the past twenty years, she has conducted epidemiological research among active injecting drug users (IDU), and published her work in high-impact journals. Her research accomplishments have significantly contributed to a better understanding of the dynamics of HIV and HCV transmission among IDUs. Her work on the relation between syringe access and HIV transmission, albeit controversial at times, directly influenced changes in prevention strategies to better address injector needs.
Dr Alex Thompson, a hepatologist and head of hepatology research at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne. He is also a Neil-Hamilton Fairley NHMRC Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and consultant to the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL). Alex has investigated genetic predictors of treatment outcome in chronic hepatitis C.
Friday 7 September 2012
Burnet Institute
85 Commercial Road
Melbourne
Victoria
Australia
3004
Please contact Liz Nicol to register your interest:
