At it’s meeting on 28 February 2023, the Board of Women’s Healthcare Australasia elected a new President and Vice President.
Outgoing President Professor Anne Sneddon and Vice President Kate Reynolds have each served a 4 year term as the leaders of WHA. Their contributions to WHA during the past 4 years has been hugely valuable, providing advice and guidance to the CEO Barb Vernon and her team during a challenging time for member health services in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
During Anne and Kate’s tenure, participation in the WHA community has grown to a record level (160 maternity services across Australia), as more and more maternal & newborn teams connect with peers through WHA to share ideas and learnings on common challenges as well as practical ways to improve services for women and their families. We sincerely Anne and Kate them for their ongoing passion and commitment to excellence in women’s healthcare.
We are delighted to announce that the new office bearers are:
Professor Jonathan Morris AM
WHA President
Professor Jonathan Morris has over 20 years of experience in caring for women with a high-risk pregnancy. He has expertise in the management of medical conditions that may affect women’s pregnancies as well as the management and prevention of preterm birth, fetal growth problems and high blood pressure in pregnancy.
Jonathan is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and completed his Obstetric and Maternal Fetal Medicine sub specialty training in Sydney. He completed his PhD in Oxford and returned to Sydney in 1998 to the Royal North Shore Hospital.
Jonathan has a long history of active involvement in research and has led a number of large clinical trials that have informed practice in Australia and overseas. His major research interests are the prediction, prevention and management of pregnancy complications.
Following research which highlighted the crucial growth and development in the last few weeks fo pregnancy, Jonathan founded the ‘Every Week Counts‘ campaign to raise awareness among both clinicians and expectant parents of the short, medium and long term implications of being born earlier than 39 completed weeks of gestation.
He is an Investigator with the Stillbirth CRE and Vice President of the Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance.
Professor Emily Callander
WHA Vice President
Associate Professor Emily Callander is a health economist specialising in maternal and women’s health. She has a particular interest in improving the health and wellbeing outcomes of women, through creating women-centred, valued-based health services, and reducing inequalities.
Emily gained a BA from Griffith University (2008) and PhD (Health Economics) from the University of Sydney (2012). She completed her postdoctoral work at the University of Sydney NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre and Charles Perkins Centre. In 2021 she was awarded the Women’s Healthcare Australasia Medal of Distinction.
Emily is currently Professor of Health Economics at the University of Technology Sydney’s School of Public Health. She also holds various advisory positions, including to the Federal Department of Health to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee Economics Subcommittee.
Emily leads a Women’s Economics and Value-Based Care research program, externally funded by a number of NHMRC and MRFF grants. She collaborates widely across a number of key maternal health research centers within Australia and internationally to provide the economic evidence base to guide health service and policy decision-making. This includes undertaking economic evaluation alongside randomised controlled trials, measuring costs and outcomes with real-world linked administrative data, and conducting local-health service level economic modeling.
