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Healthy Development Adelaide Award

Awarded to HDA members who have achieved excellence in research contributing to healthy development.

2011 : Professor John Lynch

NHMRC Australia Fellow and Professor of Public Health, Discipline of Public Health, University of Adelaide

Professor John Lynch was presented with the Healthy Development Adelaide Award at the 7th annual HDA Oration ‘Why are economists interested in early childhood health and development'.

John Lynch is the Professor of Public Health in the Discipline of Public Health within the School of Population Health and Clinical Practice, at the University of Adelaide. He is also a Visiting Professor of Epidemiology in the School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol (UK). He is an internationally recognized scholar in epidemiology and public health with more than 200 publications. In 2007 his work in public health was recognized with an honorary Doctorate in Medical Science from the University of Copenhagen. In 2009 he was awarded a prestigious NHMRC Australia Fellowship. He has been an associate editor of the International Journal of Epidemiology since 2005. John Lynch has held academic appointments in the Department of Epidemiology at the University Michigan (USA) and was a Canada Research Chair in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill University in Montreal (Canada) and in the Sansom Institute at the University of South Australia. His research interests include early childhood development, lifecourse processes, health and social inequalities, population health information systems, evidence-based public health and improving the public health research-policy-practice nexus.

Oration Overview
The 2011 HDA Oration will bring together research themes from several disciplines that have been foundational in focussing attention on the importance of supporting early childhood development for individuals, communities and societies. These include the fetal origins hypothesis, lifecourse epidemiology, early life nutrition, evidence from pre-and post natal, early childhood and pre-school intervention trials, cognitive neuroscience, personality psychology, and the econometrics of investing in early childhood programs. Australia and in particular South Australia has robust policy frameworks, innovative programs and world class research capacity to make important contributions to advancing the science and practice of early childhood health and development.

2010 : Professor Maria Makrides

Deputy Director, Women's & Children's Health Research Institute / Professor of Nutrition, University of Adelaide

Professor Maria Makrides was presented with the Healthy Development Adelaide Award at the 6th annual HDA Oration ‘Meeting the nutritional needs of early life: the evidence and the myths'.

Professor Makrides is a NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Women's & Children's Health Research Institute. She is also the Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Adelaide.  As a research dietitian, Maria is committed to improving the nutrition and health of mothers and their babies through high quality research. She has published over 100 internationally peer-reviewed articles and is co-editor of the most widely sold paediatric nutrition text, which is available in English, Chinese, Spanish and soon to be translated in to French.  In the last 5 years, Maria has attracted over $10M of research funding to support her growing team based at the Women's and Children's Hospital and at Flinders Medical Centre. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL) and is a member of the Nutrition Committee, Australian Academy of Science.

Oration Overview
Nutritional deficiencies are now rare thanks to a basic understanding of which nutrients are essential. However, new challenges in ensuring an adequate supply of nutrients to all Australians brought on by technological change are emerging. New technology has enabled us to save the lives of smaller and smaller preterm infants and meeting their nutritional needs is a continuing challenge. Advances in food technology have resulted in foods than are increasingly rich in energy but depleted in nutrients resulting in nutritional imbalances that threaten our health. Conversely, technology has allowed us to enrich foods and create supplements with synthetic nutrients that can result in nutrient levels that drift towards the toxic range. New tools for measuring the effects of nutrients on human health including large scale randomised controlled trials with long term follow-up are helping us redefine nutritional guidelines for better health for all Australians. 

2009 : Professor Eric Haan AO

Head, SA Clinical Genetics Service, Women's & Children's Hospital

Professor Eric Haan AO was presented with the Healthy Development Adelaide Award at the 5th annual HDA Oration ‘Genetics and Disease in Children’.

Professor Haan is Head of the South Australian Clinical Genetics Service, a unit of SA Pathology based at Women’s and Children’s Hospital, and a Clinical Affiliate Professor in the Discipline of Paediatrics, University of Adelaide. He spends most of his professional time providing individuals and families with genetic diagnosis, counselling and testing. Academic interests include the genetics of intellectual disability, ethical issues associated with genetic testing, the causes and prevention of birth defects and cerebral palsy, and the development and ethical use of genetic health services. He has been a member of several national committees addressing issues related to genetics and is a past President of the Human Genetics Society of Australasia and the International Federation of Human Genetics Societies.

Oration Overview
A newborn baby has both a genetic past and a genetic future. The genetic past comprises the sequences of genes inherited from parents and the effect on those genes of both genetic and environmental factors during the child's development from conception. The fact that environment plays a part raises the possibility of modifying prenatal environment for the better. In a similar way, the child's genetic future will be influenced by how the genome interacts with its environment. To what extent can we know what the future holds for a child’s health by knowing its DNA sequence and the modifications to DNA and gene expression that have occurred during prenatal and postnatal development? Do we really want to know what the future may bring and if so, why? Can anything be done to improve an individual child's health by knowing and to what extent can such information be used on a population basis to improve population health.

2008 : Professor Barbara Pocock

Director, Centre for Work+Life, University of South Australia

Professor Barbara Pocock was presented with the Healthy Development Adelaide Award at the 4th annual HDA Oration ‘Work+Life Balance? How Changing Patterns of Work affect Health and Wellbeing in Australia’.

Professor Barbara Pocock has been researching work, employment and industrial relations in Australia for twenty five years. She joined the University of South Australia in January 2006, after fourteen years with the University of Adelaide. Barbara was initially trained as an economist, completed her doctorate in gender studies, and has taught and researched labour studies and social science since the mid-1980s. Her research has included work, industrial relations, trade unionism, pay and pay equity, vocational education, inequality in the labour market and was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship (2003-2007) to study the intersections between work, family and community.

Barbara co-convenes, with Dr Elizabeth Hill, the Work and Family Policy Roundtable. She is Deputy Chair of The Australia Institute, a member of the Festival of Ideas Committee in Adelaide, and has been President, Vice-President and Conference Convenor of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ).

In 2007, Barbara was the winner of the 'Society' category in The Bulletin's 'Smart 100 Australians'. Barbara is widely published. Her latest book, Living Low Paid is to be published in late 2008 (co-authored with Helen Masterman-Smith). Her previous books include Kids Count: Better early childhood education and care in Australia (2007), The Labour Market Ate my Babies: Work, Children and a Sustainable Future (2006), and The Work/Life Collision (2003).

2007 : A/Professor Manny Noakes

Senior Research Dietitian, CSIRO Human Nutrition

A/Professor Manny Noakes was presented with the Healthy Development Adelaide Award at the 3rd annual HDA Oration ‘The science behind weight management’.

A/Professor Noakes' involvement in the nutrition and diet field began on her graduating from Flinders University of South Australia. After graduation A/Professor Noakes worked as a clinical dietician at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and at the Flinders Medical Centre in South Australia. A/Professor Noakes joined CSIRO in 1991 and is leader of the research team that developed the highly successful CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet, with 2 books published by Penguin. A/Professor Noakes has published over 100 scientific papers and is currently the Stream Leader for Diet and Lifestyle Programs at CSIRO Human Nutrition.

The prevalence of obesity in Australia has more than doubled in the past 20 years. Its relationship to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some cancers and arthritis, contributes to major morbidity, mortality and socio-economic costs. Diet and lifestyle changes can be a very inexpensive approach to preventing some of these associated risks and social burden. CSIRO has conducted several of the largest studies showing that higher protein dietary patterns for weight management have metabolic advantages over high carbohydrate patterns in overweight people with insulin resistance.

2006 : Professor Alastair MacLennan

Head, Discipline of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, University of Adelaide

Professor Alastair MacLennan was presented with the Healthy Development Adelaide Award at the 2nd annual HDA Oration 'Who will deliver the next generation? cerebral palsy causation and litigation’.

Professor MacLennan is Professor in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Adelaide and is an international expert on the menopause with a special interest in cerebral palsy. He is Director of the South Australian Cerebral Palsy Research Group and is actively involved in promoting professional and legislative changes in cerebral palsy litigation around the world. New research published internationally in 2005 and 2006 from the South Australian Cerebral Palsy Research Group shows that cerebral palsy cases are significantly associated with three new risk factors: certain hereditary thrombophilias (clotting disorders), cytokine polymorphisms (gene mutations in one of the body's main defence mechanisms to infection) and increased exposure during pregnancy to viruses.

2005 : Professor Graeme Hugo

Director, National Centre for Social Applications of Geographic Information Systems; ARC Federation Fellow, Department of Geographical and Environmental Studies, University of Adelaide

Professor Graeme Hugo was presented with the Healthy Development Adelaide Award at the inaugural HDA Oration 'Demographic change and its implications for healthy development in South Australia’.

Professor Hugo is a Federation Fellow, Professor of the Discipline of Geographical and Environmental Studies and Director of the National Centre for Social Applications of Geographical Information Systems at the University of Adelaide. He is the author of over two hundred books, articles in scholarly journals and chapters in books, as well as a large number of conference papers and reports.

South Australia ’s population is sometimes depicted as static but the reality is that it is changing profoundly in its size, composition and spatial distribution. Too often population is seen as an unchanging backdrop against which political, economic and social change play out. However the population is constantly changing and the nature and pace of these changes will be an important influence on the types of demand made on the health industry in the future. There are three main ways in which demographic changes will challenge health in South Australia over the next two decades… It will influence the pattern of disease. It will affect the level and type of demand for health services. It will have an effect on the health workforce.