My area of research is looking at vaccines
both the benefits and safety.
As a pediatrician and an Infectious Disease
Specialist for the last 20 years I've been able
to care for children who have had
terrible diseases that could have been prevented by
vaccinations and then much less
commonly I have been able to also
support families where they've had doubts
about vaccine safety for either for
themselves as adults or for their children.
So having that work, it's really stimulated
a body of research that is all about
looking at vaccines in programs and the
real world impacts in terms of benefits
and risks.
One example of the research that I've been involved in and been very
lucky to lead with a fantastic team of
colleagues, is a new safety surveillance
system called AusVaxSafety.
Around the world the usual way of monitoring the safety
of medicines or vaccines once they're licensed
and used in large numbers of people are to
just rely on passive reports from
doctors or nurses. So if someone has experienced
a reaction the doctor or nurse might send
a report in. Unfortunately that passive
reporting system for safety, doesn't give us a real
full picture of how the vaccine's performing
in tens of thousands or even millions of people.
So arising out of an event that occured in Australia in
2010 where there was a particular safety concern
around one brand of influenza vaccine in
children. Many researchers in
Australia, including our own group, did
some work to develop new systems of
contacting patients after they'd been
vaccinated. This is based on SMS
reporting back from patients about three
days after they received a vaccine and its
fully automated so people are, we're using
the power of people to give us
information that we can then leverage and turn
into research and it has been recognised as
important as the Australian Government
Department of Health have recently
awarded us a large four-year contract
to have this system active in every state and
territory in Australia in people of all ages
and across all vaccines funded under the
National Immunisation Program. I think
there are a number of factors that are important in
ensuring that research findings go
beyond publication to having a
real-world impact. That is in developing
research itself to ensure that your
focused on what an impact of the work
might be and I think for particularly
young researchers that's enabled by
having a board range of views of the
research that they're doing and understanding
how it fits in a larger picture.
I've been very lucky in my career to have had the
experience of working directly with children who
experienced the diseases that we're trying
to prevent, as well as working in a
laboratory environment where a new vaccine
was being developed. So having that
diverse range of experience, I think, can
help you place your research and make it
more translatable into policy and practice. A second important point
that I feel really strongly about it is
the strength of collaborating with others.
I wouldn't be sitting here today
accepting this award if it wasn't for the great team
and all of the people who actually
do this work together and I'd really like
to pay tribute to them, as well as saying that if we
come together as a whole to answer complex
problems and improve policy and programs
we'll really achieve alot more. And one third thing would
be just to be always thinking about evaluating,
measuring and getting feedback on what you do.
I think it's just critical to get those sort of
outcome measures that really do allow you to
evaluate the impact of your work and strive to do better.