2016 Speakers
Mr Bjarne Hastrup
DaneAge, Denmark
Bjarne Hastrup (M. Sc. Econ.) is the President of the International Federation on Ageing and Chief Executive Officer and founder of the DaneAge Association. Under his leadership, DaneAge has grown to over 700,000 members, which is nearly 13% of the entire population of Denmark.
Mr. Hastrup is very active in the debate on social welfare in Denmark and is a prolific writer, publishing many books and articles on ageing issues. He is a Professor at the University of Copenhagen where he teaches Social Policies and The Danish Welfare Model to national and international audiences.
Mr. Hastrup was awarded one of the Danish Royal family’s most esteemed orders for civilians: the Knight’s Cross 1st Class of the Order of Danneborg in 2014 and is placed among the top 100 opinion leaders in Denmark.
Dr Jane Barratt
International Federation on Ageing, Canada
Dr Barratt (BSc, MSc, PhD) is the Secretary General of the International Federation on Ageing (IFA) comprising government, industry, academia and non-governmental members in 62 countries and representing some 50 million older people.
Dr Barratt has direct responsibility for the IFAs global operational performance, quality and strategic implementation and business development including representation at the United Nations in New York, Geneva and Vienna and the formal relations with the Ageing and Life Course Department of the World Health Organization. She is a member of the Executive Committee for the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Network of Age-friendly cities and communities which is responsible for setting the global strategic direction.
Dr Barratt serves on several national and international boards both public and private sectors and is an advisor of international studies related to the care of older people. She is Chair, Selection Committee, National Centers of Excellence. She is also currently a member of the Global Agenda Council on Ageing of the World Economic Forum.
Dr John Beard
World Health Organization, Switzerland
Dr John Beard, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., is Director of the Department of Ageing and Life Course with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. WHO has identified ageing as one of its priority areas of work, and Dr Beard leads a “whole of Organization” response that draws on the extensive capacity of the Organization’s many Departments, Regions and Country Offices.
Dr Beard was lead editor of the first World report on ageing and health which was released in 2015. His team is responsible for drafting the Global Strategy and Action Plan on Ageing and Health which will be considered by WHO’s 194 Member States in 2016 and will frame how governments around the world, WHO and other partners can take concrete action to foster Healthy Ageing.
Dr Beard is an Australian physician and has held a range of senior public health and academic roles in Australia and the USA. He is the immediate past chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Ageing, is an honorary Professor with the University of Sydney and remains actively involved in several large international research studies on ageing.
Mr Peter Hicks
Peter Hicks Consulting, Canada
Peter Hicks currently takes on contract, advisory or similar work in policy development and strategic planning in the areas of social, employment and retirement policies and in knowledge management.
Peter worked for many years as an assistant deputy minister of policy in several federal government departments and central agencies, mainly in the area of social and labour market policies. During the period 1995 to 2001, he worked for the OECD in Paris, coordinating their activities on the policy implications of ageing societies.
Since his return to Canada he has worked in a consulting or advisory capacity for a number of federal departments and private bodies. Peter briefly re-joined government as Assistant Deputy Minister of policy and planning in the short-lived federal department of Social Development Canada.
He is the author of the 2015 Policy Horizons Essay, “The Enabling Society” published by the Institute For Research on Public Policy. It sets out an optimistic view of the future of social policy in Canada based on an assessment of the combined effects of fundamental trends in public expectations, governance and technology.
Dr Alex Mihailidis
University of Toronto, Canada
Alex Mihailidis, Ph.D., P.Eng., is the Barbara G. Stymiest Research Chair in Rehabilitation Technology at the University of Toronto and Toronto Rehab Institute. He is also the Scientific Director of the AGE-WELL Network of Centres of Excellence, which focuses on the development of new technologies and services for older adults. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy (U of T) and in the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (U of T), with a cross appointment in the Department of Computer Science (U of T).
He has been conducting research in the field of pervasive computing and intelligent systems in health for the past 15 years, having published over 150 journal papers, conference papers, and abstracts in this field. Dr. Mihailidis has also co-edited two books which resulted from him being the conference chair for the 2nd International Conference on Technology and Aging.
Dr. Mihailidis is also very active in the rehabilitation engineering profession, currently as the Immediate Past-President for RESNA (Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America). He was also named a Fellow of RESNA in 2014, which is one of the highest honours within this field of research and practice.
Dr Chris Poulos
University of New South Wales, Australia
Professor Chris Poulos has recently been appointed Head of Research and Aged Care Clinical Services for HammondCare, a large and highly respected provider of dementia, rehabilitation and aged care services in Australia.
He is also conjoint Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales and Visiting Principal Fellow with the Australian Health Services Research Institute, University of Wollongong.
A rehabilitation physician with over 25 year’s clinical experience, Chris is also the Immediate Past President of the Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine. Chris has a doctoral degree for his work on the rehabilitation patient journey, and a master’s degree in health policy and management. He is an active researcher and teacher and has undertaken a number of consultancies for government on rehabilitation and aged care service delivery.
His main clinical and research interests at present are ambulatory rehabilitation and models of care that support reablement and positive ageing, including a focus on people with dementia and their carers.
Prof Alan Sinclair
Diabetes Frail UK, United Kingdom
Professor Alan Sinclair is an international expert in diabetes and clinical gerontology and is Director of the Foundation for Diabetes Research in Older People at Diabetes Frail Ltd in Worcestershire, England.
Professor Sinclair is also Hon Professor of Metabolic Medicine at Aston University and consultant geriatrician and diabetologist at the Luton & Dunstable University Hospital in Bedfordshire, England. He is a former Professor of Medicine at the University of Bedfordshire and Dean at the Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire Postgraduate Medical School. He has provided advice for the UK NICE organisation, Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the UK Government Department of Health on matters relating to diabetes in older people.
He co-led the development of the IDF Guideline on Managing Older People with Type 2 Diabetes and led a successful IAGG programme on diabetes which was presented in Seoul, Korea in June 2013. Alan has been designated a WHO Expert in Diabetes and more recently been appointed to a World Expert Group on Frailty by the WHO. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of the IAGG in 2013 for services to older people and diabetes. He is the author of many papers in the area of geriatrics, nutrition and diabetes. Professor Sinclair is involved in collaboration in 5 EU-projects connected with frailty and older people involving patients with diabetes. Professor Sinclair is the National Clinical lead in England for the Older Peoples Diabetes Network.
Prof Rudi Westendorp
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Rudi Westendorp (1959) is professor of Medicine at Old age at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at Copenhagen University, Denmark (2015). He sits at the steering board of the interdisciplinary Center of Healthy Ageing exploring aging from cells to society. Trained at Leiden University, Netherlands he became a consultant in internal medicine and epidemiology and later dedicated himself into geriatrics and gerontology. He was full professor at the Leiden University Medical Center, and chair of the department of old age medicine (2000-2014).
He was founding director of the privately funded Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing (2007-2014) that conducts research, provides education and pursues societal innovations to improve quality of life of older people.
Prof Westendorp acquainted ample national and European grants, published more than 600+ original articles with an h-index of 70+, and supervised over 50+ PhD students of which three of them have been appointed full professor. He published the bestseller ‘Growing older without feeling old’ that is translated in six languages. He was endowed doctor honoris causa by the University of Newcastle, UK (2009), and received a knighthood in the order of the Dutch Lion (2014).
Ms Ninna Thomsen
Copenhagen City, Denmark
Ninna Thomsen is the Mayor of Health and Care in the City of Copenhagen since 2009.
More options for the elderly and introducing trust-based management in the Health and Care Administration are some of Ninna Thomsen’s key issues in the area of elderly care.
Dr Michael Teit Nielsen
DaneAge, Denmark
Dr Michael Teit Nielsen is a Deputy Director and Chief Officer of Advocacy, Strategy and Innovation at DaneAge Association (Ældre Sagen), Copenhagen, Denmark, where he is responsible for the Advocacy Department (staff of 17), development of policies in areas such as pensions, health, housing, etc., development and coordination of business strategy and development of management tools. He is also the main driving force behind the annual report.
After graduating in 1989 from the Institute of Economics, University of Copenhagen with a PhD in economics, Dr Teit Nielsen stayed on to carry out research and teaching mathematical economics. During this time he also studied and researched at University of California at Berkeley, USA (1985/86) and at Princeton University, New Jersey, USA (1987/88.)
Dr Teit Nielsen is an external lecturer teaching microeconomics for 2nd year economics undergraduates at the University of Copenhagen, a position he has held since 1990. He is also an external examiner at the Copenhagen Business School; MBA program and subjects in mathematical economics (since June 1991).
Prof Gill Lewin
Curtin University, Australia
Professor Gill Lewin currently holds two positions: Professor in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine at Curtin University and Research Academic in the West Australian Centre for Rural Health at the University of Western Australia. Professor Lewin has been involved in research on ageing since she joined Silver Chain, a large Australian not for profit community health and aged provider, as the Research Manager in August 1993.
During her twenty two years at Silver Chain Professor Lewin and her research team received 45 external grants and wrote more than 850 reports addressing a broad range of research questions relating to health and aged care. Professor Lewin has published eight journal articles on the topic of restorative home care/reablement programs and presented numerous papers about her research at national and international conferences.
Currently Professor Lewin represents the AAG on the Quality Indicators Reference Group which is working with the Commonwealth Department of Health to identify quality indicators for the national aged care programs.
Dr Linda Clare
University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Linda Clare is Professor of Clinical Psychology of Ageing and Dementia at the University of Exeter, where she directs the Centre for Research in Ageing and Cognitive Health (REACH) within the School of Psychology.
Dr Clare is particularly known for pioneering the application of cognitive rehabilitation approaches for people with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, and has published the first randomized controlled trial of this approach, which is described in her book Neuropsychological Rehabilitation and People with Dementia.
Dr Clare is a clinical psychologist and clinical neuropsychologist, and in 2004 she received the May Davidson award from the British Psychological Society for her contribution to the development of clinical psychology in the UK. She has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and is an Editor for the Cochrane Collaboration’s dementia group and for the journal Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. She is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, the Gerontological Society of America, and the Academy of Social Sciences. She chairs the British Psychological Society Advisory Group on Dementia and is vice-chair of the governing board of the Global Council on Brain Health.
Ms Ruth Crowder
College of Occupational Therapists, United Kingdom
Ruth Crowder (M.Sc. Econ) is chair of the Welsh Reablement Alliance and policy officer for the College of Occupational Therapists in Wales. The Welsh Reablement Alliance is an umbrella organisation of over 20 professional associations, third sector partners and care providers committed to the development of high quality reablement services and campaigning to keep people independent.
Ruth is a qualified occupational therapist with a varied career across social services, health, housing and higher education and a keen interest in the development of person centred, outcome focussed services which enable people to maximise their independence and regain control of their own lives. As policy officer for Wales for the College of Occupational Therapists she lobbies the National Assembly for Wales, Welsh Government and other decision makers to raise the profile of occupational therapy and person centred enabling services. This includes working with in close partnership with other professions and service user groups.
Ms Sue Hendy
YMCA, Australia
Sue Hendy is Vice President of the International Federation on Ageing (IFA). Sue has a background of four decades of working as an advocate for older people, working in residential aged care, local and state government; predominantly with a focus on older people, but has also focused on women, people from non-English speaking backgrounds, people with disabilities and indigenous Australians.
Sue is a regular speaker at conferences and workshops within Australia and overseas, workshop facilitator and is a regular guest on radio. Sue has also been on many Taskforces, state committees and reviews relating to ageing and ageing. Sue has held many positions in the field of ageing, including being the CEO at Council on the Ageing Victoria, Australia, which she held for over 14 years.
Sue also holds the positions of: International Ambassador for COTA Australia; Member, Uniting Age Well Quality Committee; Grant Panel for Lord Mayors Charitable; Advisory Board member, SeniorPrenuers Australia; Community Advisory member, Southern Memorial Cemeteries Trust; Chair, Global Alliance on The Rights of Older People Australia.
Mr Brian O’Connor
European Connected Health Alliance, Ireland
Brian O’Connor was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and has developed his career as a consultant, manager and/or investor in both private and public companies.
Through his long established consultancy company, Corporate Direction Ltd, he is currently providing strategic advice to Governments, International organisations and companies on the challenges facing healthcare in general and specifically on the Connected Health opportunity.
Brian has founded a number of companies in the healthcare services area in the UK, Ireland and Hong Kong. Brian is Chair of the European Connected Health Alliance organisation www.echalliance.com the rapidly expanding not for profit membership organization.
Brian is a member of the European Commission’s EHealth Stakeholder Group and a member of the European Innovation Partnership B3 Action Group on Integrated Care. He also sits on the board of the Scottish Digital Health Institute and the Connected Health and Prosperity Board in N.Ireland. He is also a Director and Shareholder of the China Connected Health Alliance, which is based in Shanghai and Beijing. He is a director and shareholder in Connected Health Ltd, a start up in N.Ireland and makes investments in health and non-health companies from time to time.
Mr Manfred Huber
World Health Organization, Denmark
Manfred Huber, PhD, is Coordinator of Healthy Ageing, Disability and Long-term Care for the World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen.
Manfred Huber has joined WHO in 2009, where he provides advice to Member States in Europe on health and social care reform for healthy ageing, better coordination of care, long-term care, disability and rehabilitation. Prior to this, he has been Director Health and Care with the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research in Vienna. Moreover, he worked for ten years with the OECD in Paris, where he was in charge of ageing and health, health indicators and health accounting. Manfred Huber is the author of a number of books on health and social services for ageing populations. He has over 20 years of experience with international comparisons of health and social policy.
Manfred Huber graduated from the University of Munich with a Master of Science in Mathematics and holds a PhD in Economics.
Dr Ritu Sadana
World Health Organization, Switzerland
Dr Ritu Sadana is Lead Specialist within the Department of Ageing and Life Course with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. She was a core writer for the World Report on Ageing and Health (2015), including lead author of an associated paper on healthy ageing and health equity. Dr Sadana is currently coordinating the preparation of the first Global Strategy and Action Plan on Ageing and Health, to be considered by the World Health Assembly in May 2016. She also leads WHO’s work on metrics, monitoring and research on healthy ageing, including revitalizing a network of WHO Collaborating Centers on Ageing and Health.
Previously at WHO Geneva, Dr Sadana was Editor-in-Chief of The European Health Report 2012, co-editor of the WHO African Region Report on Health Inequities (2010), and contributed significantly to several WHO landmark reports. She also set up and managed WHO’s Health Research Systems Analysis Initiative, a WHO Task Force on Global Research Priorities on Health Equity, and a WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage.
She holds a MSc focusing on health systems and policies research methods, from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and earned a doctorate (ScD) focusing on epidemiology and economics from Harvard University. She currently serves as an editorial advisor for The Bulletin of the World Health Organization and has over 100 peer reviewed publications.
Prof Susan Gordon
Flinders University, Australia
Professor Sue Gordon has recently commenced a joint appointment between Flinders University and the Aged Care Housing (ACH) Group in Adelaide, South Australia. ACH Group provide community, rehabilitation, transition and residential care, and have a culture of providing good lives and healthy ageing for older people. Sue’s role as a Strategic Professor and Chair of Restorative Care in Ageing is to lead the development of a new centre of academic excellence in restorative care and facilitate the growth of effective interprofessional care for older people.
A physiotherapist with over 20 years of musculoskeletal practice, Sue commenced an academic role at James Cook University in 2006 where she led the Physiotherapy Discipline, developed student led clinics and was Deputy Dean of the College of Healthcare Sciences. She is an active researcher who is passionate about changing the language and attitudes around ageing, and ensuring optimisation of function and capacity as people age. Her research has included musculoskeletal conditions, lymphoedema, disability and application of new technology in the assessment and management of conditions.
Prof Mike Martin
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Mike Martin is professor for the Psychology of Aging and for Gerontology at University of Zurich. He manages several competence centers on gerontology, plasticity, and multimorbidity, and leads a university-wide interdisciplinary strategic research program on the “Dynamics of Healthy Aging” examining pathways to the stabilization of quality of life in old age. He is a founding member of the International Association of Longitudinal Studies on Ageing (IALSA) and principal investigator and collaborator of several international and cross-disciplinary longitudinal studies on healthy ageing.
Martin is Board Member of the European Cognitive Aging Society (EUCAS), Science advisor of the European Society for Memory Training (EUVGT), Vice Director Swiss Senior Universities (U3), and Foundation Board Swiss Competence Center for the Social Sciences (FORS). He has served on the Editorial Board of the European Psychologist, European Journal of Ageing, and Gerontology.
Martin serves in the Swiss Academies of Sciences Steering Group “Changing Health Care“, is a Co-Director of the Swiss Academy for Social Sciences and Humanities Working Group on Health and Quality of Life, and regularly participates in National Research Programs on health, aging, and health data.
Dr Tine Rostgaard
The Danish Institute for Local and Regional Government Research, Denmark
Tine Rostgaard is Professor in Older people and Welfare, at KORA – The Danish Institute for Local and Regional Government Research, Denmark. She holds a Phd in welfare politics and policies from Southern Danish University, Denmark. Her research contributions have mainly been in the field of social care policies for children and older people, and she has a special interest in understanding care practice and the implication for quality of care.
Prof Rostgaard has amongst others conducted research in social care related quality of life for the two recent Danish commissions into old age care. She serves as the President of the Danish Society of Gerontology (DGS) and also as the editor of the book series Elderly and Society. She has amongst others co-edited the book ‘Care Between Work and Welfare in European Societies’, Palgrave, 2011, and co-authored the book ‘Care Regimes in Transitional European Societies’, Palgrave, 2014.
Dr Amy D’Aprix
Essential Conversations, Canada
Dr. Amy D’Aprix, a gerontological social worker, is a consultant, professional speaker, and co-founder of the Essential Conversations Project, an organization focused on training facilitators to assist families in having harmonious and productive conversations across generations. She holds a Ph.D. and Masters in Social Work, and the designation of Certified Professional Consultant on Aging.
She has authored the book From Surviving to Thriving: Transforming Your Caregiving Journey, and co-recorded a CD with an accompanying workbook: Building the Bonds of Friendship in Midlife and Beyond. Amy has also created two products, Caring Cards and the Life Journal to inspire more meaningful conversations between generations.
Mr Graeme Prior
Hall and Prior Health and Aged Care Group, Australia
Mr Graeme Prior is Chief Executive Officer of the Hall + Prior Residential Health and Aged Care Organisation in Australia. Graeme was born and educated in Perth, and completed a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Western Australia in 1983. He is one of seven siblings. His mother was a midwife and his father a Commonwealth Government Engineer. Graeme is father to Daniel (28), Andrew (24), Mason (21) and twins Thomas & Isabella (18 months), married to Fiona.
Hall + Prior provides care to approximately 1,540 residential care clients and 68 community clients in Perth and Sydney, Australia and employs approximately 2,335 people. Graeme has a clear vision for universal access to best practice and care outcomes in the Australian aged care sector. He is passionate about improving the quality of aged care services through education, workforce enablement, and the use of technology to implement evidence based practice.
Mr Frido Kraanen
PGGM, Netherlands
Frido Kraanen is the Director of Cooperative and Corporate Sustainability (CSR) at PGGM. PGGM is a pension service provider for the health care and social services sector in The Netherlands. PGGM is not only focusing on pension, but acknowledge that a good old day needs a wider perspective. Frido is working on this strategic re-orientation of the organization. He is also responsible for the company’s cooperative principles, the societal agenda of PGGM and the corporate social responsibility program. He is also a board member of the Cooperative WeHelp, board member of the nationwide Deltaplan Dementia program and supervisor in health care organization.
Before Frido joined PGGM he worked for the Netherlands’ Ministry of Health care, Welfare and Sports, lately as a deputy director for Macroeconomic policy and Labor relations. Besides that he was the Netherlands’ delegate and council member of the Health Committee of the OECD.
Dr Peter Bo Poulsen
Pfizer Denmark, Denmark
Peter Bo Poulsen holds a PhD and MSc in health economics from the University of Southern Denmark and a European University Diploma in market access from the University of Lyon, France. He has worked for Pfizer Denmark the last nine years as a health economist and has in this position a particular focus upon the development of non-interventional studies and partnership projects carried out by Pfizer in collaboration with Danish municipalities, general practice, specialists, hospitals, and patient associations.
Dr Poulsen has worked in a number of disease areas with topics such as health economics, public health, vaccines and preventive medicines, care-giver burden, and has a number of scientific publications in these areas. His most recent interest in the field of health economics is research in the attributable costs of citizens having certain chronic diseases and states, e.g. pneumonia, smoking, stroke and bleedings, and in particular the impact of this upon different budget holders. Prior to his employment in Pfizer he was partner in a Danish consultancy company, scientific consultant in the Danish National Board of Health, as well as assistant professor at the University of Southern Denmark.