2023 Churchill Fellowship award recipients named

Recipients of the 2023 Church Fellowship have been announced, including 15 recipients of the award for health-related topics.

The 2023 Churchill Fellowships have been awarded to 22 people from NSW, 24 from Victoria, 16 from Queensland, 13 from Western Australia, six from the ACT, eight from South Australia, eight from Tasmania, six from the Northern Territory and one from Norfolk Island. This year’s 104 Fellows will travel for up to eight weeks as they explore their passion projects.

“The Churchill Fellowship is a celebration of curiosity, awarding passionate and inquisitive minds in many different fields. Our Fellows are extraordinary in their passion and drive, as are the range of topics, which is incredibly vast and diverse,” said Adam Davey, CEO of the Churchill Trust.

“These people are the genuine change-makers of Australia and they are determined to innovate and bring new ways of doing things to improve Australia.”

This year, Churchill Fellowships are awarded to the following people on health-related topics:

• Julianne Chong (NSW) — To develop a model of anticoagulation stewardship for implementation across Australian hospitals.
• Anna McVinish (NSW) — The Dr Dorothea Sandars Churchill Fellowship to investigate injectable opioid agonist treatment models and best practice implementation.
• Tim Senior (NSW) — To investigate how to provide high-quality primary care to disadvantaged communities in Australia.
• Joseph Doyle (Vic) — To investigate public health systems to link people with newly diagnosed hepatitis C with treatment.
• Matthew Gutman (Vic) — The Dr Lena Elizabeth McEwan and Dame Joyce Daws Churchill Fellowship to develop advanced neuro-modulation and lesioning techniques for epilepsy and brain tumour surgery.
• Madeleine Healy (Vic) — To improve dementia assessment and management for people living with an intellectual disability.
• Judy Ryan (Vic) — The Sir William Kilpatrick Churchill Fellowship to learn how drug-impacted communities engage governments to save lives using health-based solutions.
• Katie Acheson (Qld) — The Bob and June Prickett Churchill Fellowship to examine how involving young people in decision-making can help address rising mental ill-health.
• Debbie Brittain (Qld) — To investigate best practice museum programs sustaining wellbeing of people with dementia.
• Ingrid Marshall (Qld) — The James Love Churchill Fellowship to investigate international house-like residential aged care models and their Australian viability.
• Ros Thomas (WA) — The Paul Tys Churchill Fellowship to study effective community models for the treatment of chronic loneliness.
• Ryan Doig (SA) — The Dr John and Mrs Joy Yeo Churchill Fellowship to advance molecular imaging of the spinal cord to predict neurological outcomes following injury.
• Lama Shono (SA) — To explore innovative models that respond to complex trauma on systemic and therapeutic levels.
• Melanie Turner (SA) — The Churchill Fellows Association of SA to investigate the use of emergency mental health centres for suicidal patients.
• Niamh Chapman (Tas) — To educate people to measure blood pressure at home to prevent heart disease.
   

The Winston Churchill Trust was formed in 1965, in honour of wartime UK Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. Since the inception of the Churchill Trust, more than 4700 Australians been awarded Churchill Fellowships and have identified projects where overseas research allowed them to bring back vital networks and skills.

Each Fellowship celebrates Churchill’s wish for ordinary people to do extraordinary things, travelling and gaining valuable knowledge and experience, bringing their learnings back to Australia to benefit both their local communities and more widely across the nation.

Image credit: iStock.com/blinow61