Directors


nick-crofts-img.jpg  Professor Nick Crofts AM

  MB BS, MPH, FAFPHM

 

 

Professor Nick Crofts is an epidemiologist and public health practitioner who has been working in the fields of HIV/AIDS, illicit drugs, harm reduction and law enforcement for 30 years. His major epidemiological work has been on the control of HIV and hepatitis C among injecting drug users in Australia and globally, including almost every country in Asia. As a designer and technical director of AusAID's flagship HIV/AIDS program in Asia, ARHP 2002-2007, he was instrumental in building capacity among SE Asian police forces in relation to HIV, and has worked in many settings forging relationships between police and public health. He founded the Law Enforcement and HIV Network (LEAHN) in 2009, and is Director of the Law Enforcement and Public Health Conferences. In 2017, Nick was honoured by the Queen as a Member (AM) in the General Division of the Order of Australia.

Nick Crofts was previously at the Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health for 19 years, where he was instrumental in building its Public and International Health arms, and was Deputy Director for five years. He was Director of Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre for three years, and then at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, developing its Law Enforcement and Public Health Program. His most recent appointment was as Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute in Turin. He has been a member of Australia's National Council on AIDS three times, and has performed multiple consultancies for WHO, UNAIDS, UNODC, AusAID and other bilateral and multilateral agencies.

He edited the first Manual for Reduction of Drug Related Harm in Asia, founded the Asian Harm Reduction Network, and for his work in Asia was awarded the International Rolleston Award in 1998. He is author of over 150 articles, book chapters and editorials in refereed journals; his most recent book, co-edited with Fifa Rahman, is Drug Policy Reform in East and Southeast Asia. He was technical director for AusAID's regional HIV program, ARHP, technical director of AusAID's Indonesian harm reduction program and principal investigator on an AusAID funded research project in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, on the influence of harm reduction on police policy and practice.

bill-stronach-img.jpg    Bill Stronach  
    BA, BEd

 

 

Bill Stronach spent 18 years as the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Drug Foundation which is one of Australia’s leading non-government organisations concerned with the prevention and reduction of drug related harms. Prior to this position, he was Director of Grassmere Youth Services located on the outskirts of Melbourne, working with juvenile offenders, homeless and sexually abused young people and their families. For twelve years before this he taught in secondary schools in the state of Victoria and the UK.

He was a Founding director and treasurer of Harm Reduction International (formerly the International Harm Reduction Association); a Director of the International Consortium on Alcohol and Harm Reduction and a member of the Victorian Child Death Review Committee. Hel has chaired the Boards of Anex (Association of Needle and Syringe Programs), Harm Reduction Victoria and the City of Melbourne’s Safe City Licensees Accord Monitoring Committee.

He was previously a member of the Victorian Premier’s Drug Prevention Council, the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Prevention Council, the Victorian Government’s Alcohol Strategy Planning Group and the Advisory Committee for the Centre for Harm Reduction at the Burnet Centre, Melbourne, Australia

Bill was Chairman of the Organising Committees for the 3rd (Melbourne), 7th (Hobart) and 15th (Melbourne) International Conferences on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm and LEPH2012 & LEPH2014. He brings extensive conference organising and management experience both within and beyond the public health sector.

He has been a consultant and advisor on many policy matters and projects in Australia and overseas, and contributed chapters to a number of public health, drug prevention or harm reduction publications.

 

steve-james.jpg  Steve James 
  PhD   MA  Dip Crim
 

 


Steve James is a Principal Fellow at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.   He obtained his PhD in Criminology from the University of Melbourne where he has researched and taught for 30 years.  His research has been dominated by policing and law enforcement studies.  With his colleague the late Adam Sutton, he completed the first national review of Australian drug law enforcement in 1996.  From 2012 to 2014 he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for COREPOL:  Conflict Resolution, Mediation and Restorative Justice and the Policing of Ethnic Minorities in Germany, Austria and Hungary, a European Union-funded comparative research program.  He continues to be active in law enforcement studies, particularly at the intersection with public health.