Professional Advisory Council

Rosemary has worked in health, aged care and social policy and services in senior executive roles in both Victorian and Commonwealth health departments and in the non-government sector. She is Professor of Health Policy at Victoria University and Director of the Australian Health Policy Collaboration, a national network of leading population health and chronic disease experts that works to translate research to policy information and influence to drive progress in preventing and reducing chronic diseases.Find her on LinkedIn.

Associate Professor John Blakey is a Consultant in Respiratory Medicine at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Perth. His subspecialty interest is in asthma and related conditions. John has a strong record of quality improvement and service development activities, particularly relating to the use of newer connected technologies. His discipline-bridging collaborative research has been published in leading journals, and he has ongoing studies relating to the prediction of future asthma attacks.  

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Professor Kingsley Coulthard is a nationally recognised advocate for equity of access, for children, to safe and effective medicines. His major interests have been respiratory disease, especially asthma and cystic fibrosis.

He commenced his pharmacy career at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital in 1971, working in paediatrics in Australia and overseas until his retirement as Director of Pharmacy at the Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital in 2010.

He remains involved with the practice of pharmacy by doing country locums and also in teaching undergraduate and postgraduate health professionals. He has a long-standing relationship with Asthma Australia and also delivers asthma updates on behalf of National Asthma Council Australia and Pharmacy organisations.

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Professor Anne-Marie Feyer is an expert in health and social care research, practice and policy who has worked across academia, the private sector and in consultancy.

As a senior academic, Anne-Marie successfully established a nationally and internationally recognised centre of excellence in research and its sustainable funding base.

Professor Feyer was a senior partner in a global professional services firm and led the development of a national health advisory business, to become the first global thought leadership Board member based in the Asia-Pacific region.

As a non-executive director, Anne-Marie chairs the Governance and Nominations Committee for a metropolitan Primary Health Network.

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Associate Professor Tracey-Lea Laba, is a health systems researcher and NHMRC Early Career Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation, UTS Business School Sydney.

She has expertise in health economics, drug utilisation and policy research. Her research broadly focuses on value and equity in access to medicines. She is the first person to sit on both the Drug Utilisation and the Economics sub-committees to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee. As a registered pharmacist, she also trained in hospital and community pharmacy as well as pharmaceutical industry.

Dr Laba is passionate about improving health and wellness. Her ambition is to shape the way Australians with chronic diseases, such as asthma, can more readily and equitably access high-value, affordable healthcare that will help them live the best life they can.

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Professor Guy Marks AO FAHMS is a respiratory and public health physician and environmental epidemiologist. His main research interests are in chronic respiratory disease (asthma and COPD), tuberculosis and the adverse health effects of exposure to air pollution. He is a Senior Principal Research Fellow at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, a Conjoint Professor at UNSW and Honorary Professor at Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney. He is also an NHMRC Investigator L3. He is President of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Chris has been involved in Health Informatics for over 20 years. Trained in Rural and Remote Medicine and General Practice, he worked for 13 years in rural Victoria. He assisted with the early adoption of GP desktop systems in the area,  and in developing distance education programs. Since moving to Melbourne in the year 2000, he remains a practising clinician in emergency, anaesthetics and general practice. 

He completed a PhD on ‘Doctors, Patients and Computers, the New Consultation’ in 2008, and has written extensively on the adoption and use of computers in the consultation environment. As Clinical Adviser (research) to Outcome Health, he is working with data management and quality assurance activities. He advises national bodies on policy issues pertaining to informatics and change management. He was the clinical design lead for the first three releases of Australia’s national health record (myHR) and has adjunct academic appointments at Monash, Melbourne and Macquarie universities.  

His extensive wealth of knowledge, experience, and passion in the health sector is evident through the 100 plus refereed  journals and books that have been published. Dr Chris is a member of the Professional Advisory Council (PAC) at Asthma Australia.

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Michael is a Clinical Nurse Consultant in Paediatric Respiratory at The Sydney Children’s Hospital Network. He has worked in optimising paediatric health conditions for the past 18years with a special interest in asthma and improving the access to asthma related services and education nationally. He has worked in driving translational asthma research into practice across NSW and integrating consumer feedback and ensuring that the services provided align with the needs and preferences of the individuals they serve.

Professor Sharyn Rundle-Thiele is a social marketer and behavioural scientist. She is the Founding Director of Social Marketing @ Griffith, which is the largest university based group of social marketers in the world. She is Founding Co-Editor of the Journal of Social Marketing, one of the worlds’ leading behaviour change journals.

She has led projects that have changed behaviours for 10,000’s of people in areas including health, the environment and for complex social issues. Sharyn has led programs that have increased healthy eating, changed adolescent attitudes to alcohol drinking, reduced food waste,  increased dog’s abilities to avoid koalas, and many more. 

She has published more than 150 books, book chapters and journal papers. Awards and appointments including The Philip Kotler Social Marketing Distinguished Service Award, Australian New Zealand Marketing Academy Fellow acknowledge her innovative, high-quality practice and science and her leadership. 

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Dr Shanthikumar works at the Department of Respiratory Medicine (RCH) and Respiratory Diseases (MCRI). He is clinical lead of the complex asthma service at RCH, and also serves as clinical lead for a SaferCare Victoria project aiming to improve asthma care in the Northwest of Melbourne. Further he has written clinical practice guidelines regarding the management of asthma for both the Paediatric Improvement Collaborative and HealthPathways. He was an author on the recent Asthma Australia commissioned Sustainable Asthma Care Roadmap. His asthma related research spans laboratory based inflammation profiling to identify new endotypes, to analysis of lung function, assessment of quality of care and health utilisation, as well as geospatial mapping of asthma prevalence. He serves on national and international asthma leadership committees.