Sponsors

Mr Eric Allan, Executive Manager, Residential Services, Odyssey House

Professor Bernard Balleine, Brain & Mind Research Institute, School of Medical Sciences, The University of Sydney (Invited)

Professor David Best, Professor of Criminology, Department of Law and Criminology, Sheffield Hallam University, UK and visiting Research Fellow at Turning Point and Monash University.

David Best is Professor of Criminology in the Department of Law and Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University and visiting Research Fellow at Turning Point / Monash University. He has worked extensively in addiction and criminological research and has considerable policy experience in Scotland, England and Australia.

He is the author of around 150 peer reviewed journal papers and the author of three books on addiction recovery. His work is primarily directed at recovery and desistance from substance use and offending through creating community linkages and active participation in the lived community.

Associate Professor Lucinda Burns, Senior Lecturer, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales

Dr Lucinda (Lucy) Burns is Associate Professor at NDARC and Manager of Australia’s national drug monitoring programs – the Illicit Drug Reporting System, the Ecstasy and Related Drugs Reporting System, the National Illicit Drugs Indicator Project and the Drugs and the Internet project. She holds a Master of Public Health, PhD and Graduate Certificate in Health Policy.

Her research interests include drug monitoring and surveillance systems; drug and alcohol treatment and the epidemiology of alcohol and other drug use, with a focus on particularly vulnerable populations.

Mr Stephen Ling,  Nurse Practitioner (NP), Drug and Alcohol Consultation Liaison Service, John Hunter Hospital,  Hunter New England Local Health District and Conjoint Teacher, University of Newcastle

Stephen Ling RN, NP, Diploma Health Science (Drug and Alcohol), MACN, CDAN

Stephen Ling is a member of Drug and Alcohol Nurses of Australasia (DANA) and is an accredited drug and alcohol nurse. He has worked primarily for the Consultation Liaison Drug and Alcohol Service at John Hunter Hospital for the last 17 years, nine of those as an endorsed Nurse Practitioner. In that role he has been involved in the development of a drug and alcohol in pregnancy service and in a combined drug and alcohol and complex pain clinic in addition to running his own outpatient clinic.

He was the first endorsed Nurse Practitioner in Drug and Alcohol in Australia. Stephen holds a Conjoint Teaching position with the University of Newcastle, Faculty of Health and Medicine. He has presented to both National and International forums and published on substance use, alcohol withdrawal, the role of nurses in the drug and alcohol field and on the role of the Nurse Practitioner. He has been involved in reviews of drug and alcohol related management guidelines for New South Wales Health. He is the nurse prescriber for a nurse-led opiate maintenance clinic at the Newcastle Opiate Treatment Service as an accredited opiate maintenance treatment prescriber one half day each week.

Dr Vladan Starcevic, MD, PhD, FRANZCP A/Professor of Psychiatry, Sydney Medical School – Nepean, The University of Sydney and Department of Psychiatry Nepean Hospital

Vladan Starcevic, MD, PhD, FRANZCP, has had medical education, psychiatric training and clinical, teaching and research experience and career in the former Yugoslavia, United States and Australia. He is currently Associate Professor at the Sydney Medical School of the University of Sydney and Consultant Psychiatrist and Head of the Academic Department of Psychiatry at Nepean Hospital in the western suburbs of Sydney. His main professional and research interests include anxiety, mood and somatoform disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, problem video game and Internet use, mixed emotional states, combined pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy and psychiatric classifications.

Prof Starcevic has authored or co-authored over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journal and book chapters. He has also co-edited two books on hypochondriasis and health anxiety and is the author or co-editor of five other books on various aspects of anxiety disorders. The latest book he has co-edited is entitled Mental Health in the Digital Age: Grave Dangers, Great Promise and is published by the Oxford University Press, New York.