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CICH Team

• Key Staff
• Associates
• Current AMS Students
• Past AMS Students

Key Staff

Academic

• Director: Associate Professor Trevor Duke
• Dr Steve Graham
• Professor Kim Mulholland
• Dr Fiona Russell
• Dr Julian Kelly
• Ms Samantha Colquhoun
• Dr Andrew Steer
• Dr Noel Cranswick
• Dr Georgie Paxton
• Dr Adam Jenney
• Dr Sophie La Vincente
• Dr Fiona Khong
• Dr Amy Gray
• Ms Danielle Mielnik (MAE scholar)
• Dr Mohammod Jobayer Chisti (MMed in Paediatrics student, AusAID scholar)
• Dr Irwin Law
• Mr Rami Subhi

Laboratory

• Anne Balloch
• Dr Paul Licciardi 
• Charlene Carty
• Lina Kassim
• Tanveer Ahmed
• Dr Amy Bin Chen
• Timothy Gemetzis
• Asha Wallace

Management

• Ms Amy Auge
• Ms Eleanor Neal
• Ms Joelle Milne 
• Mr Evan Willis

• Associate Professor Trevor Duke, Director

Associate Professor Trevor Duke is the Director of the Centre for International Child Health, a paediatrician and specialist in paediatric intensive care at the Royal Children's Hospital.  He has extensive experience in clinical research, teaching and public health aspects of child health in developing countries.  Interests includes the epidemiology and case management of acute respiratory infections, improving the quality of paediatric care especially in district and provincial hospitals, oxygen and hypoxaemia, neonatal illness, meningitis, and childhood tuberculosis.  He was previously a paediatrician in Goroka, Papua New Guinea, and is Adjunct Professor of Child Health in the School of Medicine at the University of Papua New Guinea.  Trevor works particularly in PNG and the Solomon Islands, where he is an active member of the Paediatric Society of PNG.  He heads the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Child and Neonatal Health in Melbourne.  He is involved in designing and implementing the WHO / UNICEF Child Survival Strategy, and the International Child Health Review Collaboration (www.ichrc.org).  He was an author and editor of the WHO Pocketbook of Hospital Care for Children.

 

• Dr Steve Graham

Paediatrician with experience in tropical child health including Malawi, Thailand, Papua New Guinea and Darwin. Particular interests include pneumonia, tuberculosis and HIV-related lung disease as well as invasive bacterial disease especially invasive salmonellosis in tropical Africa. Has worked closely with WHO and national disease control programmes in development of management guidelines for child TB and HIV-related illness, and is a co-author of the WHO Pocketbook. Interested in improving implementation of guidelines in resource-limited setting, is developing collaborative links in SE Asian-Pacific region and works part-time for International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. Awarded Leverhulme Medal for contribution to tropical medicine by Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK (2007).

 

• Senior Consultant: Professor Kim Mulholland

Founding Director of CICH, research paediatrician with experience in Gambia (6 years) and Sudan (2 years); has headed several vaccine trials including the Gambian Hib efficacy trial; spent 5 years with WHO in Geneva working on child health research and vaccine research; currently involved in the oversight of several large field trials in developing countries.

 

• Dr Fiona Russell

Paediatrician with MPHTM and extensive experience in Aboriginal health and training in anthropology; currently working on new research projects in Thailand and Fiji, and the evaluation of the Women's and Children's Health Project in PNG; established expertise in epidemiological methods of evaluating ear disease; holder of the RACP Young Investigator Award (2000).

 

• Dr Julian Kelly

Dr Kelly is a General Paediatrician and is involved with the evidence base behind the Pocket book for the Hospital Care of Children as well as implementation of the Pocketbook in the People's Republic of China.

 

• Ms Samantha Colquhoun       

A registered nurse with a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters in Public Health (International Health) who has a background in Paediatric intensive care and vaccine clinical trials. She has recently spent 18 months in Fiji as the coordinator of the Fiji Pneumococcal Project. Sam is currently the Coordinator of Pacific Rheumatic Heart Disease Control program based in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

 

• Dr Andrew Steer

Dr. Steer is a paediatrician-in-training who has completed a PhD on the epidemiology and immunology of the group A streptococcus in Fiji this is part of a larger project on the development of a global group A streptococcal vaccine.

 

• Dr Noel Cranswick

Paediatrician and paediatric clinical pharmacologist; interest in WHO essential medicines list for children and improving quality use if medicines in developing countries. He is currently a member of the Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines (2007).

 

• Dr Mohammod Jobayer Chisti

Dr Mohammod Chisti is a paediatrician who practises at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research in Bangladesh (ICDDR-B). He is currently completing a Masters of Medicine (Paediatrics) at the University of Melbourne investigating the socio-demographic and clinical factors associated with childhood pneumonia in an urban hospital in Dhaka: identifying the community and clinical factors associated with death from pneumonia, and the factors associated with hypoxaemia. Concurrently, Dr Chisti continues his clinical involvement, with training attachments in General Medicine and Intensive Care in 2008, and Respiratory Medicine in 2009.

Associates

• Dr Richard Adegbola
• Dr Pascale Allotoy
• Dr. Ross Andrews Epidemiologist with research interests in vaccine preventable diseases and Aboriginal health. Major research projects are a maternal pneumococcal vaccine trial among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mothers in the Northern Territory (PneuMum) and the East Arnhem Regional Healthy Skin Program - a community-based intervention to reduce scabies, skin sores and associated chronic diseases, including rheumatic fever and renal disease.
• Ms. Anne Balloch Department of Immunology; Anne is the Senior Research Officer of the Pneumococcal Laboratory that supports CICH's pneumococcal vaccine field work.  Pneumococcal serology and other immunological work will support two planned pneumococcal vaccine studies in  Fiji.
• Dr Michael Batzloff
• Dr. Julie Bines, Department of Gastroenterology: Dr Bines has developed a project that aims to examine the epidemiology, clinical presentation and management of intussusception (IS) in a developed country and a developing country (National Institute of Pediatrics, Hanoi, Vietnam). An increased incidence of acute IS was reported in recipients of the only rotavirus vaccine to be licensed in the U.S. and the vaccine has been withdrawn pending further investigation. Accurate and prompt identification of infants with IS will enable these patients to be treated earlier and with reduced morbidity and mortality. The clinical case definition also provides an important tool for future clinical trials of oral vaccines. The study has been developed with Prof. Kim Mulholland, Nyugen Thanh Liem, Prof. John Carlin, Prof. Graeme Barnes, Prof. Ruth Bishop, Carl Kirkwood, Mr Alex Auldist, and is supported by WHO, Geneva.
• Dr Ingrid Bucens
• Dr Jim Buttery Centre for Clinical Research Excellence in Immunisation (CCRE).
• Prof. Jonathan Carapetis Professor Carapetis is the former Director of CICH and the new Director of the Menzies School of Health, a school of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Charles Darwin University in Darwin. He is a paediatric infectious disease specialist with extensive experience working with Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory; established research record in the field of Group A Streptococcal disease covering all aspects from molecular biology to epidemiology and public health; involved with the current international effort to develop an agenda of research to support pneumococcal vaccine introduction in the developing world.
• Dr John Carlin Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit, University of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit, University of  Melbourne: CEBU has been involved, and will increase their involvement, in a number of the new studies being developed within the CICH, including for example a proposed randomised trial of alternative schedules for administering pneumococcal vaccine to infants in Fiji.
• Dr Christine Connors
• Dr Mick Creati
• Prof Bart Currie
• Dr Nigel Curtis, Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases, University of Melbourne. He is developing a collaboration with the National Institute of Pediatrics, Hanoi, Vietnam to optimize the management of patients presenting with meningoencephalitis. His research activities focus on the pathogenesis of staphylococcal and streptococcal diseases. Current projects include an NHMRC-funded study, in collaboration with the Tropical Medicine and International Health Unit at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, to investigate the role of bacterial "superantigen" toxins in acute rheumatic fever.
• Dr Margaret Danchin
• Dr. Michael Dibley: Dr. Dibley is a paediatrician and epidemiologist based in Newcastle with long experience conducting field trials in Indonesia and particular expertise in the field of micronutrient deficiency.
• Dr Khu Thi Khanh Dung, Vice-Director, National Paediatric Hospital, Vietnam and Director, Neonatal Unit.
• Dr Toa Fakakove
• Prof Michael Good
• Dr Keith Grimwood
• Dr Dinh Phuong Hao Paediatrician and Vice-Director of the Reproductive Health Department, Vietnam Ministry of Health.
• Dr Maurice Hennesy
• Dr Vanessa Johnston Dr. Johnston has been involved in developing monitoring tools and the staff training program for the Fiji pneumococcal vaccine study.
• Dr Stephen Lambert: Dr Lambert is a public health physician and epidemiologist with an interest in communicable and vaccine preventable diseases. He is currently completing a PhD in childhood respiratory viral infections at the University of Melbourne and is a co-investigator for community-based vaccine trials.
• Dr Amanda Leach
• A/Prof Nguyen Thanh Liem, Director, National Paediatric Hospital, Vietnam.
• Dr Carolyn Maclennan: UK and Australian trained paediatrician; subspecialty training in respiratory paediatrics; completed course in International Health at Monash University; was Oxfam health advisor in East Timor until recently; currently working with the East Timorese Department of Health.
• Dr Malcolm McDonald
• Dr Peter Morris
• Mr Christopher Pearce  Senior Scientist in charge of Bacteriology at RCH; involved with the inspection and evaluation of processes for the Fiji Pneumococcal study. Provides ongoing scientific advice for CICH.
• Prof Dan Penny, Department of Cardiology: The CICH and the Cardiology Department have begun to develop a comprehensive approach to paediatric heart disease in developing countries. Throughout the world, heart disease represents a substantial and largely under-recognised burden of morbidity and mortality in childhood and early adult life. The strategy incorporates elements that includes the prevention, diagnosis, medical and surgical management of paediatric heart disease.
• Mr Jan Pryor
• Prof. Roy Robins-Browne, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne, and Head of the Microbiological Research Unit at the Murdoch Children's Research Unit: He is involved in various projects concerning the epidemiology and pathogenesis of streptococcal infections, and his laboratory has established techniques to perform molecular sub-typing of clinical isolates of group A streptococci.
• Dr Viliame Sotutu
• Ms. Gowri Selvaraj
• A/Prof Mimi Tang, Dept. of Immunology: Dr Tang proposes to establish a laboratory to support CICH's pneumococcal vaccine field work. Pneumococcal serology and other immunological work will support two planned pneumococcal vaccine studies in Thailand and Fiji.
• A/Prof Nakapi Tefuarani
• Prof John Vince
• Mr Lepani Waqatakirewa
• Dr Martin Weber

Current AMS Student

•  Jocelyn Chan (2008-9) - is currently involved in research aimed at describing the levels of rotavirus antibodies in the breast milk and blood of pregnant mothers.

Past AMS Students