The Meaning of Health Podcast

We welcome back to the podcast Associate Professor Katie Attwell from the UWA School of Social Sciences and for the first time Associate Professor Marco Rizzi from the UWA Law School. We discuss how a zombie health idea that was long debunked was endorsed by the courts in Italy, having a huge ramifications for public health in the country. Our conversation centres on a couple of court decisions ar...

In this episode we are lucky enough to chat with Dr Peter Bentley. With a history practicing as a GP before moving across to telephone triage service Health Direct, Peter also spent time as a Medical Director in Perth hospitals. Peter currently works with the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood service that facilitates blood donates and ensure that hospitals are supplied with much needed blood products...

We are back with some more interesting guests as we round out our mini-series of episodes exploring working in research with Indigenous communities. We are joined by Dr Emma Haynes from the University of Western Australia and the Indigenous Knowledges Collaborative, and Mr Caleb Rivers, an Indigenous researcher from the University of Western Australia. We discuss Emma’s PhD work in rheumatic heart...

Hello and a belated Merry Christmas (in July). Join us as we catch up for chat about what is happening in the world of health at the moment, and Craig’s recent travels to the UK. We touch on the recent Australian election and what that means for health and the climate as well as what we both have coming up for the rest of the year. We will be back soon another conversation with our next guests. St...

Following on from NAIDOC week, we bring you another Indigenous-themed conversation as we chat with Kristian Rodd and Jara Romero from the Foundation for Indigenous Sustainable Health (FISH). Kristian and Jara share with us how they ended up traveling to the remote Indigenous community of Bawoorrooga in the Eastern Kimberly region of Western Australia to work with the community members to build a m...

Welcome to a very special NAIDOC week episode of the Meaning of Health. We have a virtual sit down with Indigenous researcher Professor Megan Williams from the University of Technology Sydney about her journey into academia and the many fascinating people she has met and worked with along the way. We discuss the importance of Indigenous voices having a central role in research, and how much we all...

Welcome to another episode of the Meaning of Health where we “sit down” for a virtual chat with Professor Camilla Andersen from the UWA Law School/Comic Book Contracts and Mr Peter Corner from Comic Book Contracts. Both our guest hail from Denmark originally and now call Perth home. We discuss how they have been assisting clients with visual contracts, an alternative to the long and wordy document...

Welcome back to another podcast episode as we sit down with the final guest from our series with the peer support workers from Doors Wide Open in Bunbury in Western Australia. Lee talks us through his experience with addiction and recovery, with a relationship breakdown being a major factor in Lee’s experience in getting involved in using methamphetamine and finding himself in trouble with the law...

In this episode we chat with Dr Hannah Thomas from the Telethon Kids Institute. Hannah talks to us about her work in the See, Treat, Prevent (SToP) trial which aims to treat and prevent skin problems associated with scabies and skin sores in regional and remote Aboriginal communities in the north of Western Australia. Hannah completed a PhD in wound healing mechanisms, before then going on to do a...

We bring you part 3 of our series chatting with peer support workers from Doors Wide Open in Bunbury. In this episode we sit down with Tania, originally from New Zealand and recovering from methamphetamine addiction. Tania talks us through her experience working in the pharmacy sector, and also challenges she has faced such as family and domestic violence, being diagnosed with borderline personali...

What if we told you that cannabis may help people survive pancreatic cancer? Or that cannabis could possibly be used to treat obesity? This is precisely what Professor Marco Falasca from the Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute at Curtin University is working on at the moment. Marco specialises in cell metabolism research, with a lot of his recent work focussing on cannabis as a treatment f...

We bring you our second episode in our series from the peer support team from Doors Wide Open in Bunbury, this time chatting with Miranda. This conversation was particularly intense, as Miranda discussed some very heavy issues and experiences with us, after navigating her way from a pretty successful career in real estate through drug addiction, domestic violence, suicide, homelessness and contact...

This week we change direction and bring you a conversation with Dr Murray Wesson from the Law School at the University of Western Australia. Murray brings a wealth of experience having studied legal systems from around the world, starting in South Africa, spending some time in the UK, and now Australia. Murray is an expert in human rights and constitutional law, and talks us through how these area...

Welcome to our first episode back for 2022 after a bit of a break. This episode is the first in a series of conversations that we will bring you from people who have experienced and are now recovering from drug addiction who all work at Doors Wide Open, a drop in service for people dealing with drug or alcohol problems in Bunbury, Western Australia. To kick off the series, we have a fascinating co...

We have made it to the last episode of 2021! As is becoming a bit of a tradition, we bring you a rambling recap of the year and throw in some discussion on some of the light hearted pieces that are published in the BMJ and MJA Christmas issues. We had a couple of issues with our recording for this episode, so we have gone with our backup recording which sounds a little different to usual, but hope...

We are joined in this episode by Dr Rory Watts who recently graduated with a PhD from the School of Population and Global Health at the University of Western Australia. Rory has had an interesting journey through academia and the private sector that has seen him study in the areas of medical science and public health, ultimately focusing on the area of health economics. Rory is currently employed...

Join us in this episode as we chat with attendees and presenters from the recent "Let's Present" event held at the UWA School of Population and Global Health. We have an impromptu chat with several researchers about their work and cover a range of health related topics. A big thank you to Tina Cameron, Kevin Murray, Charley Budgeon, Anna Gannett, Courtney Weber and Craig Cumming who were part of t...

Welcome back, this week we have a chat via Zoom with Shane, a peer support worker from Bunbury in Western Australia. Shane talks at length with us our his journey through life which has included periods of heavy drug use and a few stints in prison, and sees him now in recovery and working as a peer support worker at Doors Wide Open, a drop-in service in Bunbury helping people experiencing homeless...

In this episode we revisit a conversation with Prof Stuart Kinner that was originally published back in 2019. This conversation took place prior to the COVID19 pandemic so like everywhere, the way prisons function is likely to have changed significantly. A lot of what is discussed in this episode however will be as relevant today as ever, as managing the health and wellbeing of people who move thr...

In this episode we sit down with lived experience expert Susie Hincks to chat about living with schizophrenia. Susie chats candidly about her journey through life, and the period leading up to her schizophrenia diagnosis in her 20s. We talk about some of the challenges she has faced, as well as the success she has had in managing her illness, and creating awareness about it through her work in adv...

Hello everyone and welcome back after a brief hiatus. In this episode Courtney and Craig chat about their experiences so far of doing a PhD. They discuss their learnings on many pieces of the PhD puzzle, and provide a few tips on things to look out for an consider if you are thinking about doing a PhD yourself. As always, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can contact us at: meaning...

Welcome to another episode of the Meaning of Health where we discuss vaccination policy with Dr Katie Attwell, a researcher from the University of Western Australia. You may have heard Katie speaking about vaccinations and vaccine hesitancy in the media recently as she heads up Coronavax: Preparing Community and Government project as is a member of number of Australia and international committees...

We celebrate our 50th episode in style with a chat with Emeritus Professor Mike Daube from Curtin University. Mike has an impressive CV that includes serving at the Director General of the West Australian Department of Health, and being named the 2018 West Australian of the year. Mike is probably best known however for his work shining a light on the health impacts of smoking, and the tactics that...

In this episode we chat with Dr Melissa Sweet, the Editor in Chief of Croakey Health Media. Melissa is a journalist and writer whose current focus in on Public Interest Health Journalism. We discuss the origins of Croakey, which was initially borne out of the Crikey e-news bulletin, and was incorporated in its own right in 2018. We chat with Melissa about her career and experiences with Croakey, a...

Welcome back to another great episode where we continue our conversation with former NT and WA Chief Health Officer Prof Tarun Weeramanthri. Tarun was our guest in episode 37, however we were so interested in talking about his career in medicine and public health that we ran out of time to discuss what we originally invited him onto the podcast to talk about which was the Climate Health WA inquiry...