Bec Jenkinson is maternity consumer advocate-turned-researcher, with more than 10 years’ experience as a leader in the Australian maternity consumer movement, advocating for high quality, respectful, women-centred continuity of care. I am a skilled qualitative and mixed methods researcher, writer, presenter and networker with a passion for consumer and community engagement in health services, and broad experience encompassing health policy, service delivery and evaluation, and education. Bec's PhD investigated the experiences of women, midwives and obstetricians when pregnant women decline recommended care. She went on to co-lead the development and implementation of Queensland Health's Guideline: Partnering with the woman who declines recommended maternity care. Bec is now a Qualitative Research Fellow with the Australian Women and Girl's Health Research Centre, working on research projects related to weight stigma in maternity care, preconception health, and women's experiences of intrapartum care.
Associate Professor Lauren Kearney is a registered midwife and nurse and is employed as a Conjoint Associate Professor in Midwifery between the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, UQ and the Women's and Newborn Services, Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. Lauren’s teaching expertise is within the postgraduate and higher degree by research areas. Her research track record is strongly focused upon maternal and child health; specifically, within the domains of evaluation of models of care (relating to the perinatal period and early years), intravenous fluid management and access during labour and birth, facilitators to promote a positive and physiological spontaneous vaginal birth, management of postpartum haemorrhage, and strategies for enabling closeness between mothers and infants in the postpartum period. Lauren has strong industry collaborations. The recipient of several competitive research grants in the maternal and child health area, Lauren is passionate about improving the experience of health care for women and children through translation of high-quality evidence into practice.
Dr Lisa McHugh is a perinatal and infectious diseases epidemiologist at the UQ School of Public Health. She is an Emerging Leader (EL1) NHMRC post-doctoral research Fellow and lead investigator on a 5-year Investigator Grant called 'VaxiMums'. The 'VaxiMums' program is evaluating maternal vaccination programs, pregnancy loss, and respiratory infections. Before her PhD she completed a Master of Philosophy in Applied Epidemiology (MAE prgram) at the ANU.
Lisa was an early career research Fellow in the NHMRC funded APPRISE Centre for Research Excellence, that investigated the impact of influenza and whooping cough (pertussis) vaccinations recommended in pregnant First Nations women, and identifyed key factors affecting their uptake in pregnancy. Lisa was also chief-investigator on a multi-jurisdictional NHMRC funded project called 'Links2HealthierBubs' which created the largest linked cohort of individual mother-infant pairs to investigate the uptake, safety and effectiveness of influenza and pertussis vaccines, and the geographical, ethnic and socio-economic influences of vaccine uptake. Lisa was a co-investigator on a NHMRC funded COVID-19 Real-time Information System for Preparedness and Epidemic Response (CRISPER) project, which developed an interactive dashboard that mapped COVID-19 cases, widely utilised by multiple state and terrirory public health users.
Lisa's research experience and interests include clinical midwifery, First Nations health, infectious diseases, pregnancy and birth outcomes, and maternal vaccination. She has been a member of the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) since 2014 and is currently an editor for the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.
