Keynote Speakers
Kerry Sherman
PhD
Digital interventions to facilitate decision making and adjustment in chronic and acute conditions
Kerry Sherman is a Professor of Health Psychology and Director of Research Training, in the Centre for Emotional Health and School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney. She is the President-Elect of the International Society of Behavioral Medicine, a previous President of the Australasian Society for Behavioural Health and Medicine, and an elected Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine: SBM. Dr Sherman has served as Associate Editor for Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Journal of Behavioral Medicine and Health Psychology & Behavioral Medicine.
Her research focuses on determinants of psychosocial adjustment following diagnosis and treatment of serious and chronic conditions, and on the development of e-health and m-health interventions to support these individuals. This work cuts across several illnesses including breast cancer, head and neck cancer, prostate cancer and pelvic pain conditions, including endometriosis. She has developed, evaluated and implemented interventions aimed at supporting individuals diagnosed with cancer to facilitate decision making, address post-cancer body image distress, and enhance management of treatment side effects. Dr Sherman has developed and validated measures for assessing sexual functioning, rumination, illness perceptions for cross-cultural contexts, and beliefs about stress. Her research also extends to investigating the effect of serious illness on interpersonal relationships, in terms of relationship satisfaction, interpersonal communication, and relationship formation. Dr Sherman’s current research is focused on understanding the psychosocial impacts of endometriosis and in developing supportive interventions for people living with this chronic condition and in developing decisional support interventions in the context of hearing health.
William H. Dietz
MD, PhD
Hope or Despair? How can we mitigate the Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change?
William H. Dietz, M.D., Ph.D. serves as Director of the STOP Obesity Alliance, providing his wealth of obesity expertise to enhance and develop the Alliance’s research, writing and initiatives. A noted public health figure, Dr. Dietz has devoted the majority of his career to topics related to obesity including obesity prevention, nutrition and physical activity.
Dr. Dietz also heads the Sumner Redstone Global Center on Prevention and Wellness at George Washington University. From 1997-2012, he was the Director of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity in the Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Prior to his appointment to the CDC, he was a Professor of Pediatrics at the Tuft’s University School of Medicine, and Director of Clinical Nutrition at the Floating Hospital of New England Medical Center Hospitals. He received his BA from Wesleyan University in 1966 and his MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970. After the completion of his residency at Upstate Medical Center, he received a Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a councilor and past president of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, and past president of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity. From 2001-2003, he served as a member of the Advisory Board to the Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism, and Diabetes of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. In 1995 he received the John Stalker award from the American School Food Service Association for his efforts to improve the school lunch. Dr. Dietz served on the 1995 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. In 1997, Dr. Dietz received the Brock Medal of Excellence in Pediatrics from the New York Academy of Medicine. In 1998, Dr. Dietz was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2000, he received the William G. Anderson Award from the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, and was recognized for excellence in his work and advocacy by the Association of State and Territorial Public Health Nutrition Directors. In 2002, he was made an honorary member of the American Dietetic Association, and received the Holroyd-Sherry award for his outstanding contributions to the field of children, adolescents and the media. In 2005 he received the George Bray Founders Award from the North American Association for the Study of Obesity. In 2006, he received the Nutrition Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics for outstanding research related to nutrition of infants and children. In 2008, he received the Oded Bar-Or award from the Obesity Society for excellence in pediatric obesity research. In 2012, Dr. Dietz received a Special Recognition Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics Provisional Section on Obesity, and the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He is the author of over 200 publications in the scientific literature, and the editor of five books, including Clinical Obesity in Adults and Children, and Nutrition: What Every Parent Needs to Know.
Emily Holmes
PhD
Enhancing Mental Health after Trauma: Challenges and Advances
Emily Holmes, PhD, DClinPsych is a Professor in Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden and is affiliated to the Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Clinical Neuroscience. Holmes received her degree in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, UK.
She is also a clinician and completed a clinical psychology training doctorate at Royal Holloway University of London, and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience in Cambridge, UK. She became Professor in 2010 at the University of Oxford. Holmes is an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA). She is the recipient of several international awards, including from the American Psychological Association and the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Holmes serves on the Board of Trustees of the research charity “MQ Foundation”.
Holmes’ work as a clinical psychologist has fuelled her research questions. She is interested in psychological treatment innovation in mental health – both in creating new techniques and reaching more people. Under the wider umbrella of mental health science, her approach brings together psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, maths and more. Holmes’ research has demonstrated that mental imagery has a more powerful impact on emotion than its verbal counterpart. Her group is particularly interested in understanding and reducing intrusive memories (‘flashbacks’) after traumatic events, whether a severe car accident, traumatic childbirth, war, or events during the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end her research team in Uppsala are creating a hub studying intrusive memories internationally, with current collaborations including UK, Iceland, Columbia and Australia.
Renee N. Salas
MD, MPH, MS
Behavioral Medicine’s Critical Role in Catalyzing Climate Action
Dr. Renee N. Salas is a well-recognized expert on climate change and its implications for health and health care delivery. Dr. Salas was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021 for this work, an honorific society that is considered one of the highest honors in the field of health and medicine. She has led endeavors with the world’s top general medical journals, including spearheading The New England Journal of Medicine Group’s Climate Crisis and Clinical Practice Initiative and serving as a guest editor for the series entitled “Fossil-fuel Pollution and Climate Change.”
Dr. Salas is also a member of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, serving as the lead author of the U.S. Brief between 2018 to 2021 – moving to senior author in 2022 – and founded and leads its Working Group of over 80 U.S. organizations. She frequently speaks at high-level engagements across diverse sectors, including testifying before Congress for the full House Committee on Oversight and Reform. She engages in research to explore how climate change is impacting the health care system. She serves on committees at the nexus of climate change and health nationally and internationally and received awards and recognition for her contributions. Her expertise and work are regularly featured in mainstream media outlets like the Associated Press, New York Times, NPR, and USA Today. Dr. Salas holds a variety of appointments at Harvard University and is also a practicing emergency medicine physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Tim Stockwell
PhD, FCAHS, MA, MSc.
Counting, communicating and costing standard drinks: Reflections on implications for alcohol research, prevention and policy
Dr Stockwell is a Scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR) and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Victoria, Canada. He has published over 400 research papers, reports and books on substance use epidemiology and policy. He was a clinician and researcher in the UK before joining Australia’s National Drug Research Institute as Director.
Moving to Canada in 2004 he established the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research as a multidisciplinary research enterprise investigating the determinants of harmful substance use and also effective harm reduction strategies. He was a recipient of the international 2013 E.M Jellinek Memorial Award for alcohol research, a recipient of the inaugural national award from Research Canada in 2014 for health research leadership and advocacy and is
a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has two daughters, Caitlin and Matilda, and lives in Victoria with his wife Paula.
Master Lectures
Christiane Hoppmann, PhD
Social Relationship Dynamics and Health in Old Age: Evidence from Daily Life Assessments
Dr. Christiane Hoppmann is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Psychology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies, in the Faculty of Arts. Her research examines when and for whom social relationships and goals promote or undermine health and wellbeing. Her work captures everyday processes using daily life assessments of subjective experiences (‘time-sampling’) in combination with stress markers and health behaviors. She seeks to better understand how everyday processes accumulate to shape longer term health outcomes across the adult lifespan and into old age. Her work has attracted several awards (e.g. Killam Faculty Research Prize, Michael Smith Scholar Award, American Psychological Association, Division 20 and Gerontological Society of America Early Career Awards). Dr. Hoppmann gratefully acknowledges funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Vancouver Foundation, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.
Leticia Nogueira, PhD, MPH
Climate-driven Challenges in Healthcare Delivery
Leticia Nogueira, PhD, MPH, is Senior Principal Scientist in the Surveillance and Health Equity Science Department at the American Cancer Society and holds an Adjunct Professor position at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. Dr. Nogueira’s research focuses on disparities in cancer care and outcomes that can be addressed by policy changes, with a focus on climate change and structural racism. Dr. Nogueira earned her doctoral degree from the University of Texas at Austin and her Master of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. She received the Fellows Award for Research Excellence from the National Institutes of Health in 2014, the Woman in Cancer Research Award in 2013, and the Minority Scholar in Cancer Research Award in 2010, both from the American Association for Cancer Research. In 2018, Dr. Nogueira was inducted into the University of Texas College of Natural Sciences Hall of Honors and in 2020, she received the Outstanding Young Alumni Award from the University of Texas at Austin.
Josée Savard, PhD
Is it possible to implement a psychological intervention in routine cancer care? The example of cancer-related insomnia.
Josée Savard, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Université Laval (Québec, Canada) and researcher at the CHU de Québec-Université Laval Research Center and Université Laval Cancer Research Center and a clinical psychologist specialized in cognitive-behavioural therapy and psycho-oncology. Her research projects are mainly centered on the psychological aspects of cancer and the efficacy and accessibility of cognitive-behavioural interventions for improving patients’ quality of life. More specifically, she is recognized as an international leader in the study of cancer-related insomnia. In 2022, she was elected fellow of the Canadian Association of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies and, in 2020, she received the Distinguished International Affiliate award of the Society for Health Psychology of the American Psychological Association (division 38). In 2020, she co-edited the Handbook of Sleep Disorders in Medical Conditions, which received the PROSE award of the Association of American Publishers for the best handbook in medicine and clinical science.