Rick Speare Oration 2024 – Professor Maxine Whittaker

The Rick Speare Oration was established in 2022 as an annual lecture series by the College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences to honour the late Professor Rick Speare and his significant contributions to the field of One Health.

Named after Professor Speare, these orations serve as a platform for invited scientific presentations focusing on One Health, which encompasses the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health.

Professor Maxine Whittaker (ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1677-2991), public health physician, applied medical anthropologist and health and community systems teaching/research academic is Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Vector Borne and Neglected Tropical Diseases and former Dean of the College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences at James Cook University. She focusses on a) improving accessibility and acceptability in/of health systems/services and b) One Health social sciences and systems. She works with the Civil Society Platform for Health Equity and Inclusiveness in the Greater Mekong Subregion and supports strategic planning/GEDSI for mosquito borne diseases in the Pacific.

She holds roles with One Health High Level Expert Panel (for the Quadripartite of FAO, WHO, WOAH and UNEP), Partnerships for a Healthy Region Technical Reference Group (Australia); Biosecurity Ministerial Advisory Committee (Queensland); Monash University’s Centre to Impact AMR Advisory Council; Chair Reaching the Unreached Technical Working Group (WHO WPRO); Senior Editor CABI One Health; Independent Reference Group member for Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, contributor to FAO RAP discussion paper/information brief/workshops on Health, Wildlife and Livelihoods and co-author/editor of One Health: the added value of integrated health approaches 1st/2nd editions (CABI). Since 2010, Professor Whittaker has been Principal/ Co-Investigator national/international competitive/industry/other research grants ($85,000,000) (Goggle Scholar h index 35, i10 index 86). She has lived/worked in Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Zambia, Zimbabwe and worked in several Asian, African and Pacific nations on health/development project/programme design.

In 2017 she was awarded the Royal Australasian College of Physicians International Medal in recognition of outstanding service in developing countries.

Find out more about JCU: https://www.jcu.edu.au/college-of-public-health-medical-and-veterinary-sciences/news-and-events/rick-speare-oration-series
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