Institute of Public Health

Owen Metcalfe is Director of the Institute of Public Health in Ireland. Prior to taking up the position as Director he lead on health promotion, youth, elderly and gender targeted programmes. He directs the cross cutting area of health impact assessment and leads on the communications brief. Owen is also the company secretary and takes the lead on governance, finance and human resources issues.

Prior to joining the Institute Owen worked as Chief Health Promotion Advisor for the Department of Health and Children. He has also worked as a teacher, trainer and counsellor.

He has a Master’s Degree in Health Promotion, a degree in Business Studies, a Higher Diploma in Education and a postgraduate counselling qualification. He has been involved in health education and health promotion for twenty years and is widely conversant with public health and health promotion policy, planning and implementation at regional, national and international levels. In 2009 he was awarded Fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health UK

In his current position Owen has a commitment to personal and organisational development for improving the effectiveness of public health.
 

Specialist in Public Health Medicine & Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology and Public Health, RCSI

Dr Paul McKeown is a Consultant in Public Health Medicine and a Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology and Public Health at the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland. Paul graduated in medicine from University College Dublin, trained as a General Practitioner in the UK, and returned to Ireland where he trained in Public Health Medicine.

In 2001 he was appointed a Consultant in Public Health Medicine at the Health Protection Surveillance Centre in Dublin, which is Ireland's specialist agency for the surveillance of communicable diseases. Dr McKeown has responsibility for surveillance and provision of expert advice on gastroenteric and zoonotic diseases, vectorborne disease and emerging disease. He has served on a number of national and international advisory and guidance groups in the area of infectious diseases, and is a participant in EU and international surveillance and research initiatives in the field of infectious disease. His research interests include gastrointestinal, zoonotic and vectorborne disease, outbreak management and the epidemiology of emerging infections.

In addition, he has a deep interest in the impact of social inequalities on health status

Senior Researcher, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland

Meri Koivusalo, MD, Dr Med.Sc is a medical doctor by background with a PhD in Environmental Epidemiology and a MSc on environmental health policy. However, during the last 15 years as a senior researcher in National Institute for Health and Welfare in Finland she has been more involved with national and international health policy issues and policy-making. Dr Koivusalo has been working with Ministry of Social Affairs and Health on health policy and contributed to the book on Health in all Policies in Europe during the Finnish Presidency of the EU in 2006. She has consulted for the European Commission and WHO in the area of healthy public policies, equity in health and health in all policies, globalisation and social determinants of health.

Associate Professor and Health of Department of paediatrics, TCD and Consultant Paediatric Endocrinologist, National Children’s Hospital AMNCH

Edna Roache is a Consultant Paediatrician/Paediatric Endocrinologist at the National Children’s Hospital Tallaght and Associate Professor of Paediatrics and Head of Department of Paediatrics at the University of Dublin Trinity College. She has extensive national and international experience in paediatrics and paediatric endocrinology and diabetes. Her research interests include growth, obesity and puberty with a particular interest in Prader Willi and Turner Syndrome.

She has a significant interest in diabetes and diabetes epidemiology and has established the national register for type 1 diabetes. She has an interest in Management holds a Masters in Business Administration from TCD and has lectured in Health services Management. She has a clinical and research interest in child and adolescent obesity. She Chairs the Faculty of Paediatrics subcommittee on Obesity, is a member of the Nutrition Council of the Irish Heart Foundation and is the Irish member of the Obesity Services for Children and Adolescents Network (OSCA Network UK and Ireland).

Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Drug Treatment Board

Dr Bobby Smyth is a Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist, working full time with adolescents who have substance use disorders for the past nine years, based at the Young Persons Program in the Drug Treatment Centre Board and at the two HSE adolescent addiction services in south-west Dublin - Youth Drug & Alcohol (YoDA) Service in Tallaght and the Adolescent Addiction Service in Cherry Orchard.

Dr Smyth was a member of the HSE Working Group on Quality and Standards in Addiction Services. Dr Smyth sat on the Department of Health working party examining treatment services for under 18s with serious addiction problems in Ireland.

He is also a Senior Clinical Lecturer with the Department of Public Health & Primary Care in Trinity College Dublin. He has been involved in addiction research for past fifteen years and has published over 30 addiction research papers in national & international peer reviewed journals on topics including treatment outcome, unsafe injecting and early onset drinking.
 

Lecturer in Health Promotion, NUI Galway

Colette is currently a lecturer in the Discipline of Health Promotion in NUI, Galway and is a senior researcher in the Health Promotion Research Centre, a WHO collaborating centre for health promotion research. Colette is also a registered Public Health Nutritionist and her research interests include young people’s health and health behaviours, particularly dietary behaviours.

Colette has been project manager for the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey since 2005, a WHO collaborative project and is a member of the international HBSC team through her active involvement with the Eating and Dieting Focus group, the Obesity Writing group and the Policy Development group. More recently Dr Kelly has been working with young people around the dissemination of HBSC results to their peers and engaging young people in the HBSC survey in a more participative manner.