MedConnect: Closing the Gender Health Gap

Professor Clara Chow AM

Professor Clara Chow is Academic Director of the Westmead Applied Research Centre (WARC), Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney. Clara is a cardiologist and Clinical Lead of Community Based Cardiac Services at Westmead hospital and is also a member of the Western Sydney Local Health District (WSLHD) Governing Board, Sydney, Australia.  Professor Chow is Director of the Australian Stroke and Heart Accelerator (ASHRA) and was honoured with a Telstra Brilliant Woman in Digital Health Award in 2022. She is a 2023 Honour of Australia recipient. She holds an honorary appointment as the Charles Perkins Centre Westmead Academic Co-director and is past-President of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. Professor Chow’s research focuses on the prevention of cardiovascular disease, innovation in the delivery of cardiovascular care and the evaluation of digital health interventions.
 
Clara has expertise in the design, delivery and implementation of clinical trials. Her PhD from the University of Sydney, Australia was in cardiovascular epidemiology and international public Health and her Postdoc from McMaster University, Canada in clinical trials and cardiac imaging. She has over 250 publications including papers in internationally leading medical journals NEJM, JAMA and Lancet. She is supported by a NHMRC Investigator grant.

Dr Rebecca Deans

Doctor Rebecca Deans is an internationally recognised researcher in the surgical management of benign gynaecology and endometriosis and has a special interest in paediatric and adolescent gynaecology. She works as a gynaecologist at The Royal Hospital for Women, as Fertility Specialist at the RHW Fertility Research Centre, is the only paediatric and adolescent gynaecologist at the Sydney Children’s Hospital, and is a Senior Lecturer at UNSW School of Women's & Children's Health.

Among Dr Deans’ many accomplishments are over 60 peer reviewed publications in leading national and international publications, 5 book chapters and over 20 research papers. Dr Deans is an experienced and prize-winning university lecturer, convening courses in Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology and is passionate about disseminating knowledge to other medical practitioners and the wider community. She has also been invited to present 14 times at national and international meetings.

Dr Deans has worked with international leaders to establish protocols and is the lead researcher of a collaborative uterine transplant project. In January 2023 Dr Deans and her team performed the first Australian uterine transplant at the Royal Hospital for Women. She was awarded NSW Woman of Excellence in 2023.

Professor Robyn Norton AO

Robyn Norton is the Founding Director of The George Institute for Global Health, a not-for-profit, medical research organisation established in Sydney, Australia in 1999 and now also with offices in China, India, and the UK.  Robyn is Professor of Public Health at UNSW Sydney and Chair of Global Health at Imperial College London.  She has an MPH and a PhD in epidemiology and has published widely in the fields of injury, global health, and women’s health. 

Robyn has had a long-standing commitment to improving the health of women and girls and co-established The George Institute’s Global Women’s Health Program.  This program of work takes a life course approach to addressing the leading causes of death and disability for women and girls, especially non-communicable diseases and injuries (NCDIs). She currently co-leads work in both Australia and the UK focused on the development of policies to ensure increased representation of women as participants in health and medical research and the disaggregation of data by sex and gender. 

Robyn was appointed a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2016 and was made an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2017. In 2021 she was appointed as a member of Chief Executive Women and earlier this year, was appointed to the Australian Women’s Health Advisory Council.

Tegan Taylor (Host)

ABC health and science reporter and co-host of the ABC’s multi-award-winning Coronacast.

Tegan also co-hosts ABC Radio National’s Health Report and hosts the live event series and radio/podcast Ockham’s Razor. She’s been known to pop up on Radio National Life Matters, Triple J and in the Best of Australian Science Writing. In 2020, Coronacast won a Walkley Award and the Eureka Prize for Science Journalism. Tegan was previously a producer on the ABC's national digital newsdesk, a journalism lecturer at The University of Queensland and, long ago, a newspaper reporter.