Introducing you to the current Executive Committee for the Sexual Health Society of Victoria.
The following committee was voted in at the SHSOV AGM in March 2023.
Dr Lenka Vodstrcil, President
Dr Lenka Vodstrcil is a Senior Research Fellow and epidemiologist in sexual and reproductive health at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre-Central Clinical School, Monash University. Her translational research program focuses on improving treatment strategies for bacterial vaginosis and other STIs that are refractory or resistant to current therapies.
Associate Professor Eric Chow, Vice President
Associate Professor Eric Chow is a sexual health epidemiologist at the Central Clinical School, Monash University, the Head of Health Data Management and Biostatistics Unit at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, Alfred Health, and an honorary principal fellow at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne. His research focuses on male HPV vaccination programs and novel interventions for STI prevention and control. He has received several national and international research awards including the Levinia Crooks Emerging Leader Award in Blood Borne Viruses and Sexually Transmissible Infections (2020) and Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research (2020).
Dr Amie Bingham, Secretary, Website Administrator
With a background in sociological research, Amie has been a mixed methods academic in the public health arena for over a decade. Her sexual health work has focused on marginalised and underserved populations, including out-of-school youth, sex workers, and rural populations, strongly informed by a social determinants of health and social ecological lens. She has a particular interest in understanding ‘place’ and sexual and reproductive health outcomes.
Amie has significant experience in the fields of health systems and workforce, including the development and retention of rural health workforces, and also has a strong background in program evaluation and policy development. She is currently a Research Fellow with the Indigenous Epidemiology and Health Unit, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.
Associate Professor Christopher Fisher, Treasurer
Associate Professor Christopher M. Fisher works in the areas of Sexual and Public Health. Christopher takes a leading role in research on young peoples’ sexual health and wellbeing. A major focus of the work is on adolescent sexual health knowledge, behaviours and educational experiences (both formal and informal). His current work centres on the National Survey of Secondary Students and Sexual Health in Australia, using predominately quantitative population survey methods but also including qualitative work. Previous work has looked at the role of youth development professionals in Non-Govermental Organisations (e.g., youth groups) in providing sexual health information (qualitative and quantitative) as well as adolescent perspectives on promoting sexual health (qualitative). He has also conducted population-based research in LGBTIQ health (quantitative) and HIV prevention and care (mixed methods evaluation).
Dr. Fisher currently serves as the Graduate Research Coordinator at ARCSHS and is the Course Coordinator for the new Graduate Certificate in Sex, Health and Society. He also maintains a Director Emeritus role at the Midlands Sexual Health Research Collaborative and Adjunct position in Health Promotion at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health in the USA.
Dr Lydia Di Stefano, Medical Representative & Social Media Co-ordinator
Lydia is a doctor currently working as a resident in obstetrics and gynaecology. She is passionate about maternal, newborn, reproductive and sexual health, and is forever balancing clinical medicine with research in this field. Lydia’s degrees include a MSc from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she studied stillbirth in low-income settings, and a BMedSc(Hons) undertaken at the University of Oxford and focusing on the ethics of artificial wombs.
Associate Professor Jason Ong, ASHA Representative
Jason is a sexual health physician and health economist based at Melbourne Sexual Health Centre and an academic with joint appointments at Monash University, University of Melbourne and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His passion is to ensure access to comprehensive sexual health services to all who need it, particularly marginalized populations in Australia and beyond.
He is also actively involved in committees of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians Chapter of Sexual Health Medicine, the Australasian Sexual Health Alliance, and the Australasian Society of HIV, viral hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine.
He is the Special Issues Editor for Sexual Health; Associate Editor for BMJ’s Sexually Transmitted Infections and BMC Infectious Diseases; and Editorial Board Member for Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Dr Jacqueline Coombe, Memberships Co-ordinator
Dr Jacqueline Coombe is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, working on a NHMRC funded Partnership Grant which aims to develop a model for strengthening chlamydia case management in general practice. Jacqueline’s research interests broadly lie in sexual and reproductive health, particularly (non-)use of long-acting reversible contraception, and pregnancy intention. In 2020-2021 she lead a project exploring the sexual and reproductive health impact of COVID-19 on people living in Australia. Jacqueline is a qualitative researcher, with a particular interest in the use of free-text comments collected in health surveys as qualitative data.
Dr Michael Traeger, Grants Coordinator
Michael completed a Master of Science in Epidemiology in 2017, and is currently undertaking a PhD at the Burnet Institute with a focus on STI epidemiology and prevention among gay and bisexual men using HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis. Michael’s research involves using large sentinel surveillance datasets to monitor epidemiological trends in blood-borne viruses and STIs among priority populations and to evaluate large-scale public health interventions.
Dr Erica Plummer, Executive Assistant
Dr Erica Plummer is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Bioinformatician with the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, Central Clinical School, Monash University. Erica’s broad research interests include women’s health, sexual heath and the genital microbiome. Erica’s research uses next generation sequencing data to understand the contribution of the genital microbiome to common genital infections, and she is particularly interested in determining how interventions, behavioural practices and sexual practices influence the composition of the genital microbiome.
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