Keynote and invited presentations

• Jill Guthrie and Bobby Maher were invited to participate on a panel convened by the Institute of Public Administration Australia to discuss the NAIDOC Week Whole of Government Indigenous Policy and Evaluation Strategy

Other conference presentations

• Grace Joshy attended the 40^th Annual Conference of the International Society for Clinical Biostatisticians in Belgium and presented on the ‘Impact of loss to follow-up on estimates of well-established exposure and health outcome relationships.’

RSPH Workshops and seminars

Jill Guthrie convened a NAIDOC Week symposium as part of RSPH/PHX Seminar Series, where Jan Chapman (MK Study), Tamara Riley (MAE scholar), Maureen Gustafson (Visitor from Canada working on MK study) and Amanda Wingett (ANUMS) spoke about their research projects and in the context of the NAIDOC theme “Voice, Treaty, Truth”.

Implementation, Engagement and Outreach

• The CVD and smoking paper was released on Thursday 4^th July
• Emily Banks met with the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance at the Shine Dome and participated in the Strategy Planning Day
• Emily Banks participated in the two day workshop with NHMRC reviewing the Alcohol Guidelines
• Emily Banks went to Wagga Wagga to participate in the Study of Environment on Aboriginal Resilience and Child Health (SEARCH) planning workshop
• Ray Lovett and Alyson Wright wrote independent reports and gave evidence at Fair Work Commission's hearing of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service Award
• The Mayi Kuwayu team published their July newsletter which can be found online at https://mkstudy.com.au/news/july-newsletter/

Media Releases/interest

• The publication of the paper on tobacco smoking and risk of 36 CVD subtypes in BMD Medicine (4 July 2019) attracted a lot of media attention with a net media reach of 4.5 million people nationally. Emily was interviewed on television and radio. Editorials in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age; ANU media team notes they have never seen this before for a scientific paper. Next step is preparing articles regarding the CVD and Tobacco paper for medical/GP publications

New staff

We’re welcoming Ms Karen Bishop on Tuesday 6 August as a biostatistician. Karen has come from the AIHW and will be working with Grace Joshy on the Multiple Caused of Death Project.

Papers accepted/published

• Banks E, Joshy G, Korda R, Stavreski, Soga K, Egger, Day C, Clarke, Lewington, Lopez. Tobacco smoking and risk of 36 cardiovascular disease subtypes: fatal and non-fatal outcomes in a large prospective Australian study. BMC Medicine. Published 4 July 2019
• Welsh J, Korda RJ, Joshy G, Banks E. Primary absolute cardiovascular disease risk, assessment and treatment in people reporting psychological distress in the Australian population: a nationally representative cross-sectional study. Frontiers in Public Health-Epidemiology. Published
• Fogg A, Welsh J, Banks E, Abhayaratna, Korda R. Variation in cardiovascular disease care: An Australian cohort study on gender inequalities in receipt of coronary procedures. BMJ Open. Published
• Welsh J, Korda R J, Joshy G, Greaves K, Banks E.  Variation in coronary angiography and revascularisation procedures in relation to psychological distress among patients admitted to hospital with myocardial infarction or angina. Journal of Psychosomatic Research. Accepted 4 Aug 2019
   

Progress on research projects.

• The CVD consensus statement on updating risk assessment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults aged under 35 is complete.

FaCTS study report is in its final stages and near completion