The Meaning of Health Podcast

Episode 97 - Finishing A PhD With Courtney And Craig by The Meaning of Health Podcast

We return with our first episode for 2024, and bring you a great conversation with Mariam Alessa, a podiatrist from Kuwait currently completing a PhD investigating diabetic foot disease at the School of Allied Health at UWA. Mariam takes us through her journey which has seen her study in Malta and the UK, before practicing in Kuwait and doing research in Abu Dhabi. Mariam talks through some of the...

We’ve made it through to Christmas 2023! In this special Christmas episode, Craig, Courtney and Leah are joined by special guest Doug Maclaurin from the UWA Media and PR team, who is also the host of the brand new Research on the Record podcast at UWA. In addition to the usual discussion about an article from the BMJ Christmas issue, we all reflect on what has been quite an incredible year for man...

In part 2 of our conversations with Dreambuilders Care, we chat first with Dave, a service user at Dreambuilders, followed by Kylie, the day manager of the service. Dave discusses his challenges with alcohol dependence and how he recently reached the milestone of being 1 year sober. Dave talks about the importance of asking for help when you need it, how Dreambuilders has been a great help to him...

We travel to Midland to chat with Dreambuilders Care CEO Ursula Dixon for this episode, which is the first of 2 that we will release about Dreambuilders. Dreambuilders are a charitable organisation that operates a low cost supermarket, a café, and a community kitchen, to help feed people in Midland who may be struggling to help ends meet. Ursula chats with us about a lot of the challenges Dreambui...

In this episode we venture out to Royal Perth Hospital for a chat with Dr Erika Bosio, Laboratory Head in the Centre for Clinical Research in Emergency Medicine, and a senior lecturer at the UWA School of Biomedical Sciences and Graduate Research Coordinator at the UWA Medical School. Erika talks us through her career in research, which took her to Italy and back again. She has conducted research...

Prof Anna Nowak joins us in the studio for a chat about the many strings to her bow. From studying music and playing the violin during school (and learning the flute more recently), through to treating cancer patients and investigating how to improve treatment outcomes, Anna’s career is a source of inspiration for many people. Anna talks us through what drew her to practicing cancer medicine, gett...

We sit down for a yarn with prominent Indigenous academic Prof Dawn Bessarab. Dawn is a Bard/Yindijibarndi Aboriginal woman who grew up in the Kimberley in North Western Australia. She has a background in social work, and is now the Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Medical and Dental Health at UWA. Dawn has led many innovations in Indigenous research methods, and was responsible for developin...

In this brief episode we welcome Leah Roberts as a new host to the podcast. Leah joined us as a guest in episode 87 and we are delighted to have her join the hosting team. Our introduction touches on a couple of contemporary issues that are receiving media coverage at the moment (corporate misbehaviour and the Voice to the parliament) which Leah provides looks at with her political science hat on....

We sit down with Alex Hughes to have a chat about the current homelessness crisis in regional Western Australia. Alex previously worked for the 100 Families project and was a podcast guest all the way back in Episode 16, and is now working with Just Home Margaret River, a community-led grass roots organisation that assists people in and around Margaret River who are experiencing, or at risk of hom...

Episode 87 - Drug Policy And Medicinal Cannabis With Leah Roberts by The Meaning of Health Podcast

Welcome to another episode where we chat with Dr Erin Kelty, a researcher at the UWA School of Population and Global Health. Erin discusses her research career, starting with animal research, through to the work she currently does researching medication safety during pregnancy. Erin shares some breaking news with us about a large grant that she and her collaborators were awarded to investigate the...

Podcast episode 85 has us sitting down with Shane Thomas an occupational therapist from Youth Axis, a mental health service in Wembley for people aged 16-24 years who are at high risk of developing psychotic illness or an emotionally unstable personality disorder. Shane discusses how Youth Axis is designed to provide early support and treatment to help people manage their mental health with the ai...

We are delighted to bring you a fascinating conversation with Taryn Harvey, the CEO of the West Australian Association for Mental Health (WAAMH). Taryn is a tireless advocate for people who are often left disempowered by our health and social systems. She worked for many years as an advocate in the disability sector before taking up the role of CEO at WAAHM in 2018. Taryn discusses the role that W...

If you have ever thought that elderly drivers on our roads may pose a risk to safety, then this episode is for you. We sit down with Dr Wendy Feng to discuss the safety of elderly drivers which she studied for her PhD recently. Wendy talks us through her journey into research, as well as her experience in navigating a PhD that had more than its fair share of challenges. Wendy was a delightful gues...

Weight Stigma, what is it and how to does it affect people and the healthcare they receive? Listen as we get some answers from lived experience experts and advocates Jeni and Clare, along with lived experience expert and academic Dr Blake Lawrence from Curtin University, and dietician and PhD candidate Kristy Law from the George Institute. They talk us through the social and psychological determin...

We’re back with another great chat, this time with Dr Brad MacDonald from Perth Children’s Hospital. Brad currently works in paediatric medicine as a paediatric trainee as well as being enrolled in a PhD at the UWA School of Population and Global Health. Brad discusses his journey from being a science student, through to enrolling in Medicine and now specialising in paediatrics. We talk in depth a...

A belated welcome to the Meaning of Health 2023! After a bit of a hiatus we bring you a conversation that we had late in 2022 with Mr Andrew Miller, an occupational therapist working at Graylands Hospital both in the main hospital and also in the Creative Expression Centre for Arts Therapy (CECAT). CECAT is also located on the hospital grounds. Andrew chats with us about the work he does with peop...

Join us as we sit down for a special Christmas chat with our colleague Dr Dani Barrington from the School of Population and Global Health. We go through some of the winning articles from the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) Christmas competition and review what has been quite a year in 2022. We finish off our Christmas episode with a musical number "Research Utopia" that Craig first debuted at t...

We sit down with Prof Romola Bucks in the studio for a chat about her work over the years and her current roles. Romola is currently the Pro Vice Chancellor of Health and Medical Research at UWA and has a background in neuropsychology and has focussed a lot of her practice and research on cognitive decline with ageing, as well as the impact that sleep issues have on cognitive decline. In recent ti...

In this episode we sit down for a chat with Dr Stephen MacDonald and Jono Burcham from the ARISE fluids study. Stephen is an Emergency Doctor and clinical researcher and Jono is a research nurse, both based at Royal Perth Hospital. ARISE fluids is investigating two different approaches to treating patients who are diagnosed with septic shock, a life-threatening condition that kills thousands of pe...

We sit down for a virtual chat with Damien Linnane, a exhibited artist, published author and PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales. Damien discusses his lived experience of being in prison, and why he is focusing his research on how being excluded from receiving health services funded by Medicare impacts on the health and wellbeing of people incarcerated in prisons across...

Welcome to a special episode where we take a look at research that won prizes as part of the 2022 Ig Nobel Prizes. Courtney looks at a study into the physiological effects of blind dating and Craig looks at a study that investigates whether eating ice cream could help to minimise some of the side effects of cancer treatment. For more on the Ig Nobel Prizes go here: https://improbable.com/ig/winner...

Data privacy has been in the news recently due to a recent large-scale customer data leak involving Optus in Australia. Another key area where data privacy applies is the area of population level health data, with these data often being used in research to investigate issues such as health problems and potential ways to prevent and treat them. Our guest in this episode is Emeritus Professor D’Arcy...

Imagine for a second what it would be like to be reaching adulthood as a gay man in the early 1980s in Perth and be diagnosed with HIV, a new virus with no known treatment that was responsible for many deaths, particularly amongst your peers in the gay community. This is exactly the situation that our guest in this episode, Pete Townsend, found himself in. In the decades that followed, Pete was ab...