Keynote and invited presentations

Jo Lane is giving a Director’s seminar at JCSMR on 29 April on MS in Australia.

Other conference presentations

Lal L, and Leach L. Research-led teaching for Public Health: Challenges and opportunities. CAPHIA, Rotorua, NZ. 2019.

Student news

ECH has a new PhD Student, Ripon Adhkary, working with Aparna Lal, Katie Glass and Barry Croke at the Fenner School looking at the health impacts of changing water quality.

Honours student Rose Hosking working with Aparna Lal and CSIRO looking at water quality, land use change and health impacts.

Papers accepted/published:

1. Neale RA, Khan SR, Lucas RM, Waterhouse M, Whiteman D, Olsen CM. The effect of sunscreen on vitamin D: a review. British Journal of Dermatology (accepted 4 Apr 2019)

1. Black L, Baker K, Ponsonby A-L, van der Mei I, Lucas RM, Ausimmune Investigator Group, Pereira G. A higher Mediterranean diet score, including unprocessed red meat, is associated with reduced risk of central nervous system demyelination in a case-control study of Australian adults. Journal of Nutrition (accepted 9 Apr 2019)

1. Holmes EA, Ponsonby A-L, Pezic A, Ellis JA, Kirkwood CD, Lucas RM. Higher sun exposure is associated with lower risk of pediatric inflammatory bowel disease: a matched case-control study. J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr (accepted 2 Apr 2019)

Progress on research projects

The PFAS Health Study: The team is preparing ethics documentation and research protocols for the data linkage study, as well as planning a trip to Katherine for community consultations in May. A shipment of bloods arrived the last week of April. Anna Rafferty was appointed to the PFAS Health Study team as a research assistant.

OHIOH MS Cohort: We have ethics approval from ACT Health to being using MSBase, and electronic clinical record for people with MS. This is used nationally and internationally (but never before in the ACT) and provides an opportunity to query the data for >50,000 people with MS. We are currently putting together the ethics application to ACT Health to commence recruitment for an ACT MS Cohort