A big welcome to everyone for our first episode of 2021. We start the year with a bang with a conversation we recorded late last year with Adjunct Professor Tarun Weeramanthri. Tarun holds an adjunct position at the School of Population and Global Health at UWA, and has an extensive and impressive CV. Tarun is a medical doctor, and also completed a PhD. He practiced medicine in the Northern Territory, and has been extensively involved in Public Health research, as well as working in the public sector as the Chief Health Officer (CHO) in both the Northern Territory, and most recently in Western Australia. Tarun is the current president of the national branch of the Public Health Association of Australia. As you will hear from our conversation, Tarun's experience is vast, and there was plenty to discuss about the many events and initiatives that he has been involved in over the years. Tarun talks us through the process of drafting the Public Health Act 2016 that came into force during his time as WA CHO, and how the Act is intended to operate. Tarun also discusses some of the challenges he had to tackle whilst CHO in WA, particularly around the approval he signed off on for the opening of the children's water park at Elizabeth Quay, and the process of addressing high levels of lead in the water at the Perth Children's Hospital. You will hear how Tarun and his team managed to do what numerous construction engineers could not; identify the source of the lead in the water, and make the necessary changes to ensure that the problem was resolved. We initially had invited Tarun onto the podcast to discuss the Climate Health WA Inquiry Final Report that was table in the WA Parliament in December, but Tarun has agreed to come back and discuss that in a future episode as our conversation about his previous work quickly filled up our time. We hope that you enjoy the conversation as much as we did, and look forward to bringing you part 2 soon!
Some info and links:
The Climate Health WA Inquiry Final Report: https://ww2.health.wa.gov.au/-/media/Corp/Documents/Improving-health/Climate-health/Climate-Health-WA-Inquiry-Final-Report.pdf
A blog post from Tarun outlining the key findings and themes of the report: https://intouchpublichealth.net.au/2020/12/04/wa-must-take-urgent-action-towards-health-impacts-of-climate-change/
Tarun's research profile: https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/persons/tarun-weeramanthri/publications/
Bill Gammage's book "The Biggest Estate on Earth": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13041243-the-biggest-estate-on-earth
As always, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can contact us at: meaningofhealth@outlook.com or via twitter @healthmeanswhat
