WHOCC Executive Members

Hayley Jones is Director of the McCabe Centre for Law & Cancer, a joint initiative of Cancer Council Victoria, the Union for International Cancer Control and Cancer Council Australia. Hayley is Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre of Law and Noncommunicable Disease, which is hosted by the McCabe Centre. Hayley leads the team based in Australia, Fiji, Kenya, New Zealand and the Philippines. Through world-leading research and training programs, the McCabe Centre empowers individuals, organisations and governments to use law to prevent cancer and other noncommunicable diseases, and to advance equitable health care for all people. Hayley is Co-Chair of the Executive Board for the Australian Network of WHO Collaborating Centres and has been part of the Executive since 2020. Hayley leads the McCabe Centre’s work as the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Knowledge Hub on Legal Challenges and also sits on the WHO WPRO Technical Advisory Group on NCDs. Dual-qualified as a lawyer in Australia and England, and with a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne, Hayley’s background includes legal initiatives supporting access to justice, health and education for children, migrants and people living in poverty, focused on ensuring no one is left behind.

Dr Philippa Hetzel is the Director of NRL, an operating division of St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. Australia’s NRL or ‘National Reference Laboratory’ has been designated as a WHO Collaborating Centre for Diagnostics and Laboratory Support for HIV/AIDS and other blood born infections since 1985. NRL works to improve the quality and accuracy of Testing for infectious diseases and provides a number of integrated services ranging from quality assurance programs, reference testing and blood screening, Biobanking, research and development, training and capacity building in laboratory systems. NRL also undertakes pre- and post-market evaluation of IVDs and is one of fourteen laboratories globally which is designated by WHO as a Pre-qualification Evaluation Laboratory.

Prior to joining NRL, Philippa has worked in public health and the blood transfusion sectors including over twenty-five years for the Australian Red Cross Blood Service in both State and National leadership roles. She was responsible for delivering Australia’s national blood supply from donor recruitment and selection, blood collection, laboratory blood screening and testing, component processing and manufacture and distribution of blood and blood products.

Dr Jocelyne Basseal is the Associate Director for the Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute, where she leads the strategic development of the institute with a focus on external relations and partnerships, including the WHO Collaborating Centre for Tuberculosis. Prior to this role, she supported the COVID-19 response for the WHO’s Western Pacific Region, providing infection prevention and control expertise to low-middle income countries in the region. Earlier in her career, Jocelyne held key positions in the non-for-profit sector, including Managing Editor, Research & Policy Manager for the Australasian Society for Ultrasound in Medicine where she was instrumental in developing best practices in infection prevention and control within medical imaging. She was also an advisor for several commercial entities and contributed to the establishment of a research grants scheme for a philanthropic organisation.

Jocelyne’s leadership extends to her tenure as the immediate past President and Vice-President of the Australasian Medical Writers Association. She currently serves on the Australian Network of WHO Collaborating Centres Executive Committee, the NSW IPAC / HAI Strategic Advisory Committee and the Standards Australia HE-023 (Processing of Medical and Surgical Instruments) Committee. Jocelyne enjoys her free time supporting a local cricket club over the past five years as a dedicated volunteer manager for a girl’s cricket team.

Kim Brislane is the CEO of the Asbestos and Dust Diseases Research Institute (ADDRI) in Concord NSW which was designated by the WHO as it’s Collaborating Centre for the Elimination of Asbestos Related Disease in 2021. ADDRI is also a United Nations delivery partner.

Kim brings to the role nearly 30 years of experience spanning the private, non-profit, and public sectors and proven leadership skills in relationship building, project management, fundraising and marketing, business and finance. She specialises in Strategic Communication, Philanthropy, Events and Marketing and has raised tens of millions of dollars for organisations/causes by successfully developing and implementing long term visionary campaigns which build significant profile, community impact and revenue.

Previous roles include National CEO of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award in Australia, Deputy CEO at The Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation and successful international Corporate Consultant and Political Fundraiser/Advisor.

Dr. Julian Gold was educated at Sydney University Medical School, completing his residency at University College Hospital London. He attended the Londonschool of Hygiene and Tropical medical where he did a Dip Epi & Med Stats (MPH equivalent) followed by two years as Australia’s first Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer (EIS) at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. He then served as Programme Officer at WHO responsible for the Indian sub-continent in Family Planning and Reproductive Health. On returning to Australia, he was employed by The Commonwealth Institute of Health at Sydney University and In 1982, he was appointed to the National AIDS Taskforce, responsible for establishing the national AIDS Surveillance system. In 1985, he established the first public HIV testing centre called The Albion St Centre. Over the past 30 years, this centre (now called The Albion Centre) has become the largest service in Australia and is a WHO Collaborating Centre of Excellence for HIV and STI Capacity Building and Healthcare Worker Training. He obtained an MD (PhD) in 1992 with a Thesis on the Epidemiology of AIDS in Australia. He has a clinical caseload of patients with HIV and continues to participate in teaching and research as Director of The Albion Centre and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre. Since 2009, he has become increasingly interested in repurposing antiretroviral therapies for other diseases, especially Multiple Sclerosis and Motor Neurone Disease or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which are both suggested to be associated with Human Endogenous Retroviruses (HERVs). This work is conducted in Australia and Europe, where he has Professorial appointments at King’s College London and Queen Mary University of London.

A/Prof Aditya Vyas MBBS MPH FAFPHM FHEA GAICD is a public health physician and Deputy Director of the Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) Global Research Centre at the University of Canberra, Australia. Adi has held senior leadership roles at the Ministry of Health in Sydney, Australia and is a consultant to the World Health Organization on climate resilience and environmental sustainability. He is an advisor to international health systems including Fiji, Philippines, England (NHS), Sierra Leone (Ebola response), and the United Nations COP28 Presidency. Adi is a Fellow and Examiner of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine, and Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Dr Lo has nearly three decades experience in global and international health with qualifications in medicine (University of Melbourne), tropical medicine (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and a Masters in Public and International Law (University of Melbourne).

She is currently also Consulting Editor (Global and Planetary Health Commissions) for The Lancet medical journal where she was previous Senior Editor based in London and Beijing. She has been handling editor of a number of global health peer reviewed commissions including the Rockefeller Lancet Planetary Health report, the first Lancet series on Transgender Health and Global Health 2035: Investing in Health.

Selina sits on the steering committee of SESH global which builds crowd funding capacity for lower and middle income country researchers in infectious diseases and comes to the Alliance from the Monash Sustainable Development Institute (MSDI). She retains an active interest in the arts and local community – supporting Correspondences and by writing the occasional art review.

Professor Susan Sawyer holds the inaugural Chair of Adolescent Health, Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne (2005-), which was endowed in 2015 as the Geoff and Helen Handbury Chair of Adolescent Health. She is Director of the Centre for Adolescent Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital (2005-), a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Adolescent health. The subject of a personal profile in The Lancet (2007), she was inducted into the Victorian Women’s Honour Roll in 2013 in recognition of her contribution to adolescent health and medicine. She was awarded the Victorian Premier’s Award for

Excellence in Mental Health in 2011. In 2016, she was the recipient of the University of Melbourne Engagement Award (Department of Paediatrics) in recognition of sustained community engagement, policy impact and public advocacy and the recipient of its Postgraduate Teaching Award in 2018.

Maxine A. Whittaker, MBBS, MPH , PhD, FAFPHM, GAICD is the Director of the World Health Organisation’s Collaborating Centre for Vector Borne Diseases and Neglected Tropical Diseases. Her work focusses on a) improving accessibility and acceptability 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 is a member of Partnerships for a Healthy Region Technical Reference Group (DFAT< Australia); Biosecurity Ministerial Advisory Committee (Queensland); Monash University’s Centre to Impact AMR Advisory Council; and member of the United Nations One Health High-Level Expert Panel; Chair of the Reaching the Unreached Technical Working Group (WHO WPRO); Senior Editor CABI One Health, and Independent Reference Group member for Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. Maxine Whittaker has lived and worked in Bangladesh, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Papua New Guinea and worked extensively in China, Fiji, Indonesia, Kenya, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tanzania, Thailand , Tonga, Vanuatu, and Vietnam. She has extensive experience in project and programme design in health and development, especially in infectious diseases, One Health, and sexual and reproductive health, gender analysis, and using rapid formative research and anthropological methods and for a variety of international development partner and NGO organizations. In 2017 she was awarded the Royal Australasian College of Physicians International Medal in recognition of outstanding service in developing countries.