2017 ONLINE CONFERENCE: New clinical tools for early life care

Helen Ball is professor of anthropology and director of the Infancy & Sleep Centre (DISC) at Durham University. She founded Basis, the Baby Sleep Information Source in 2012 as an outreach project of DISC, and was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further & Higher Education in 2018. Her research examines the sleep ecology of infants and their parents including attitudes and practices regarding infant sleep, behavioural and physiological interactions of infants and their parents during sleep, infant sleep development, and the discordance between cultural and biological sleep needs. She conducts research in hospitals, the community, and her lab, and she contributes to national and international policy and practice guidelines on infant care. She is a board member of the International Society for the Study and Prevention of Infant Deaths (ISPID), chair of the Scientific Committee for the Lullaby Trust, and qualifications board member for Unicef UK Baby Friendly Initiative, and associate editor for the journal, Sleep Health.

Pam has been a practicing as a GP since 1987, and is a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. She is Medical Director of the Possums Clinic, Brisbane www.possumsonline.com; Associate Professor (Adjunct) at the Centre for Health Practice Innovation, Griffith University; and Senior Lecturer, Discipline of General Practice, The University of Queensland.

Pam has specialised clinical interests in early life, mental health, and women’s health. She is qualified as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (1994-2004; 2012 ongoing) and is an infant feeding and breastfeeding medicine specialist. She is trained in the delivery of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Her research focuses on clinical support and optimisation of parent-baby neurohormonal synchrony regardless of feeding method, and integrates the latest medical science, neuroscience, lactation science, evolutionary medicine, attachment psychology, and contextual behavioural science. She is also author of a popular new book for parents, The discontented little baby book: all you need to know about feeds, sleep and crying, which health professionals find useful too because of its detailed exploration of real-life cases.

Renee is a Registered Nurse and Lactation Consultant with fifteen years experience working in Neonatal Intensive Care units in Sydney, Canberra and Darwin. She completed a Graduate certificate in neonatal intensive care nursing in 2004, and qualified as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant in 2010. Renee offers holistic care not just for breastfeeding problems, but also for problems of unsettled infant behavior, feeds and sleep throughout the first year of life. 

Anya is an endorsed Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner specializing in perinatal mental health. Formerly in private practice in the U.S., she focused on treating birth trauma, perinatal loss and postnatal mood and anxiety disorders. She is Possums certified, and especially compelled by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy’s capacity for healing and empowering new parents facing mental health challenges.

Koa is a clinical and developmental psychologist and an NHMRC research fellow at The University of Queensland. She has a substantial track record spanning three key research interests: parenting, neurodevelopmental disability and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). She is particularly passionate about the application of ACT to parenting.

Dr Whittingham is author of Becoming Mum, a self-help book for the psychological transition to motherhood grounded in ACT. She is a co- founder of Possums Education, and is responsible for the integration of ACT into the Possums approach.

Professor Jeanine Young commenced in the School of Nursing and Midwifery in August 2013. Jeanine is a Registered Nurse, Registered Midwife and qualified neonatal nurse. She completed her PhD in infant care practices and their relationship with risk factors for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in 1999 through the University of Bristol’s Faculty of Medicine. Jeanine has established a research program to investigate Queensland’s relatively high infant mortality rate, with a particular focus on developing evidencebased strategies and educational resources to assist health professionals in delivering Safe Sleeping messages to parents with young infants and to address Close the Gap targets to reduce Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander infant mortality. Jeanine has a special interest in infant care practices and in particular, breastfeeding and parent-infant bed-sharing issues. Jeanine authored the Queensland Health Safe Infant Sleeping guidelines, Safe Infant Sleep and Indigenous Safe Infant Sleep eLearning programs; and developed bedsharing information/position statements for SIDS and Kids, Australian College of Midwives, and Australian Breastfeeding Association. She chaired the SIDS and Kids National Scientific Advisory Committee 2008-2015 (current member) which works to ensure that safe sleeping public health recommendations are evidencebased and authored the consensus paper underpinning the 2012 Safe Sleep, My Baby public health campaign which reintroduced breastfeeding back into the Safe Sleep recommendations. Jeanine is also a member of the Australian College of Midwives Scientific Review and Advisory Committee which provides the ACM Board with advice on scientific matters, and prepares discussion papers and position statements to support midwifery practice.

Dr. Smillie is an American pediatrician who founded in 1996 the first private medical practice in the USA devoted to the specialty of breastfeeding medicine.

Board certified by both the American Board of Pediatrics in 1983 and by the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners in 1995, she values her continuing education from colleagues, research, and breastfeeding babies and their mothers.

She’s been a member of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine since 1996, and an ABM Fellow since 2002. She serves as an advisor to the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Breastfeeding and on La Leche League International’s Health Advisory Council.

Dr. Smillie speaks nationally and internationally about the clinical management of a wide variety of breastfeeding issues, always stressing the role of the motherbaby as a single psychoneurobiological system, and emphasizing the innate instincts underlying both maternal and infant competence.

Dr Howard Chilton has been a babies' physician for over 35 years, following training in London, Oxford and the United States. For much of this time he was Director of Newborn Care at the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney, while also gaining invaluable experience not only as a neonatologist but as a working father to his two daughters, Georgina and Isabella. Dr Chilton continues to work clinically at the Royal Hospital and Prince of Wales Private Hospital and is one of Australia's leading baby doctors. His previous book, Baby on Board, now in its third edition, is revered by parents for its rigorous evidence-based information couched in a reassuring, easy-to-read style.

Dr Vishal Kapoor is a general paediatrician with a keen interest in neonatology. He has over 17 years of paediatrics experience, and extensive neonatal experience in regional and tertiary care centres. He holds a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS), Doctor of Medicine in paediatrics (MD), Diplomate of National Board (DNB), and is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP). He completed his two-year neonatal fellowship at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, which is one of the largest public neonatal units in New South Wales.

He served as the Director of Paediatrics at Redland Hospital for five years, and as the Clinical Sub-Stream Lead for paediatrics in the Women’s and Children’s Stream for two years at Metro-South Health. He was also a member of the Queensland Statewide Maternity and Neonatal Network Steering Committee. At Redland Hospital he led the establishment of the CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) for newborns in the special care nursery, helping to provide better neonatal services to the local community. He is currently Director of Paediatrics at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital.