Congratulations to student scholarship awardees

The Centre congratulates the following students on being awarded scholarships in the second half of 2021, and wish them all the best for their research and training programs.

Higher Degree by Research Students

Samuel Rollin BSc (Hons)

PhD candidate: Flinders University

Project: How high-dose androgen therapy and the epigenetics and regulation of immune pathways in prostate cancer.
Supervisors: A/Professor Luke Selth, Professor Michael Michael

Ralph Ernst Scholarship (prostate cancer research)

Joshua Hodgson BSc, BHMSc

PhD candidate: The University of Adelaide

Project: Predicting response to cyclin-dependent kinase inhibition in prostate cancer.

Supervisors: Professor Lisa Butler,
Dr Margaret Centenera

Commonwealth Government Research Training Program Award, FCMHW supplementary scholarship

Georgia Goddard BPsych (Hons)

PhD candidate: The University of Adelaide

Project: Men’s misuse of insulin
Supervisors University: Dr Melissa Opozda,
Prof Deborah Turnbull

Commonwealth Government Research Training Program Award, FCMHW supplementary scholarship

Jacob Brain BSc, MAppSc

PhD candidate: The University of Nottingham, UK and the University of Adelaide

Project: Development of dementia risk prediction models in the context of cardiovascular disease.

Supervisors: Dr Phillip Tully, Professor Deborah Turnbull (University of Adelaide) and nd Dr Matthew Smoutit (Uni of Nottingham)

Combined University of Nottingham/University of Adelaide PhD Scholarship

Honours Student

Joshua Deluao

Current degree: Bachelor Health & Medical Sciences, The University of Adelaide

Project: Understanding the optimal reactive oxygen species concentrations in sperm required for the generation of a healthy embryo.
Supervisors: Dr Nicole McPherson,
Macarena Gonzales

FCMHW Honours scholarship

Summer Vacation Students

Mitchell Nicmanis

Current degree: Bachelor Psychology
The University of Adelaide

Project: Cultural adaptation of a men’s health and wellbeing for a health services use monitoring app.

Supervisors: Professor Gary Wittert, Professor Deborah Turnbull, A/Professor Niranjan Bidargaddi

Adelaide Summer Research Scholarship

Jack Lear

Current degree: Bachelor of Psychological Science (Advanced), The University of Adelaide

Project: How coping flexibility relates to mental health outcomes for Australian men.
Supervisors: Dr Ian Zajac, Dr Melissa Opozda

Adelaide Summer Research Scholarship

An Dieu Nguyen

Bachelor of Science
The University of Adelaide

Project: Targeting fatty acid oxidation in advanced prostate cancer.

Supervisors: Professor Lisa Butler
Dr Zeyad Nassar

FCMHW Summer Research Scholarship

Samuel Ziesing

Bachelor of Psychology (Hons)
University of Adelaide

Project: Men’s uptake of telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Supervisors: Dr Melissa Opozda
Professor Deborah Turnbull

FCMHW Summer Research Scholarship

Congratulations 2021 Honours Scholarship awardees

The Centre congratulates the following students on being awarded FCMHW Honours Scholarships for 2021 and wish them all the best for their research and Honours year.

Mr Sam Ziesing

Bachelor of Psychology, University of Adelaide

Project: Men’s usage and satisfaction with Telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Supervisors: Prof Deborah Turnbull and
Dr Melissa Opozda

Mr Murray Nankivell

Bachelor of Psychological Science,
University of Adelaide

Project: Self-reported alcohol use during COVID-19 in men.
Supervisors: Professor Deborah Turnbull,
Dr Melissa Opozda

Mr Dale Woolford

Bachelor of Psychology,
University of South Australia

Project: Understanding self-help strategies male farmers use to maintain good mental health and their ideas on how to mitigate the barriers they face to seeking professional mental health help.
Supervisors: Dr Kate Gunn, Professor Deborah Turnbull, and Dr Maatthew Smoutit

Ms Patience Castleton

Bachelor of Health & Medical Sciences,
The University of Adelaide

Project: Evaluating the interplay between semen ROS concentrations, sperm function and seminal plasma cytokine abundance in men.
Supervisors: Dr Nicole McPherson,
Dr David Sharkey

FCMHW officially launched by His Excellency the Honourable Hieu Van Le AC Governor of SA

Ms Sheralyn Holmes, Company Secretary of FCMHW Ltd welcomed His Excellency the Honourable Hieu Van Le AC Governor of South Australia and 120+ guests to the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute for the official launch the SA Division of the Freemasons Centre for Male Health & Wellbeing on Monday 8 February.   

We were honoured to have Jack Buckskin, a proud Kaurna Narungga man, welcome us to Country. Jack is a young leader in the community who is dedicated to learning and passing on his knowledge and language of the Adelaide Plains to future generations of Kaurna people. He shared his experiences growing up as a boy, a young man and now as a dedicated father and described how learning to dance gave him his strong connection to his culture.

His Excellency, Patron in Chief of the former Freemasons Foundation Centre for Men’s Health and current Patron of Masonic Charities, acknowledged the importance of and the quality and impact of the research the Centre has carried out and how proud he is that Australia’s only multi-disciplinary male health research centre calls SA and NT home.

Professor Steve Wesselingh, Executive Director of SAHMRI and Director of the Freemasons Centre for Male Health and Wellbeing Ltd, spoke to the significance of the Centre working across SAHMRI’s themes addressing the significant health challenges facing our community – cancer, chronic disease, mental health, social wellbeing, and, as COVID has highlighted, infectious diseases to ensure a gender lens is applied to how we better understand, educate about and reduce the burden of these conditions and importantly improve on our delivery of health services. 

Grand Master of Freemasons of SA/NT, and Chairman of the Board of the FCMHW Ltd and former Director of Masonic Charities, Dr Neil Jensen MBBS FRACGP FAAETS (USA) Colonel (Retrd), spoke to the importance of benevolence to Freemasons. Freemasons are taught to be ever alert to the needs of others and to promote happiness. This centre is an iteration of our desire for a better tomorrow. “Through the work of this Centre, we see our great masonic family providing tangible help for our fellow citizens: men, women and children.”

Professor Gary Wittert, Director of the FCMHW SA Division, acknowledged the now 13 year history of the Centre and the major investment of the University of Adelaide and Freemasons of SA/NT through the Freemasons Foundation, and now Masonic Charities, that has led to the success and growth of the Centre from a handful to now more than 50 researcher. He thanked those involved and spoke with great pride of the many young outstanding researchers and students who the Centre has supported. He cherry picked just some examples of how the Centre’s research has influenced and changed practice.

L to R: Professor Michael Liebelt, Mr Robert Clyne OAM OS, Dr Neil Jensen, Ms Sheralyn Holmes, Professor Steven Wesselingh, His Excellency the Honourable Hieu Van Le AC Governor of South Australia, and Professor Gary Wittert.

The formal part of the event concluded with His Excellency and Dr Jensen unveiling a plaque commemorating the establishment of the Centre which will be placed in the Hall of Fame in the Grand Lodge building of Freemasons of SA and NT on North Terrace. 

FCMHW thanks Morgan Stanley Australia for its generous sponsorship of this event.

Press Release

Grants to promote wellbeing of young Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander males in NT

Congratulations to researchers based at the Freemasons Centre for Male Health and Wellbeing – Northern Territory, led by Professor James Smith, on recently being awarded two grants:

• A Menzies School of Health Internal Small Research Grant to commence work relating to the adaptation of an online mental health education and support intervention for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males. This is a collaborative project with the University of Michigan, the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, and other Australian universities. This research has been catalysed by the collaborations James formed with Professor Derek Griffith at Vanderbilt University and Professor Daphne Watkins at the University of Michigan during his Fulbright Senior Scholarship program (see overview here). Other investigators involved in this project are Himanshu Gupta (Inaugural FCMHW NT Research Fellow), Anthony Merlino (Research Assistant), and Jahdai Vigona (Indigenous Trainee), all of whom are based at the Menzies School of Health Research.

• An Australian Government Department of Health grant of $103,940 for the Confident and Health Aboriginal Males Program (CHAMP): The development and piloting of a strengths-based health promotion program for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Males in the Northern Territory”. The Investigators are Prof James Smith, Mr Anthony Merlino, Dr Himanshu Gupta, and Dr Daile Rung and the project will be undertaken in collaboration with the Darwin Indigenous Men's Service, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation, Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet, and Edith Cowan University.

Launch of the Freemasons Centre for Male Health and Wellbeing - SA Division

Press Release:

The Freemasons Centre for Male and Health and Wellbeing (FCMHW) is a research alliance involving the Masonic Charities and The University of Adelaide and SAHMRI in SA and the Menzies School of Health Research in the NT

The Founding member of the former Freemasons Foundation Centre for Men’s Health and Director since 2012, Professor Gary Wittert (The University of Adelaide and SAHMRI), says the FCMHW brings together globally recognised leaders in male health research.

Top priorities for the Centre’s SA Division include prostate cancer and pre-conception health as well as a focus on the common chronic conditions affecting men such as obesity, diabetes, depression, sexual health and troublesome lower urinary tract symptoms.

As well generating new knowledge as to the causes of and optimal way to treat men for these conditions, a central aim of the alliance is to ensure research translates into real world changes in clinical and public health practices.

“Our work to date has shown clearly that men do use health services and they do care about their health,” Prof Wittert said.

“Great improvements can be made, relatively simply, through changes that ensure our health care system is catering for and communicating to men more effectively.”  This will be a particular focus for the Centre over the coming years.

The FCMHW SA Division is being officially launched today, following the successful launch of the Northern Territory division in November 2020.

The Centre is the evolution of the Freemasons Foundation Centre for Men’s Health which was established in 2007 and maintained through a $7.2 million dollar partnership between the Freemasons Foundation and the University of Adelaide.

Masonic Charities, the charitable arm of Freemasons SA/NT is donating a minimum of $1.8 million over three years to the new Centre, funds that will be matched collectively by the research alliance partners.

The Grand Master of the Freemasons SA/NT, Dr Neil Jensen, said the new centre will build on the foundation laid by its predecessor with an increased capacity to improve male health outcomes due to a stronger, broader network. “We started at a time when men’s health was not really spoken about and it’s now in a far better place,” Dr Jensen said.

“We’re very proud of what’s been achieved so far, but there’s still much work to be done and the Centre will play a pivotal role in the future.”  We are often asked, as Freemasons, what do we do.  Benevolence and serving the communities in which we live are core to Freemasonry. The Centre is a perfect example of the contribution made by Freemasons of SA/NT particularly given the positive impact that the Centre’s work will have for males, their families and communities.  

The official launch of the SA Division of the Centre will be held at SAHMRI on Monday 8 February.

Overview of Fulbright Senior Scholar program: Professor James Smith

Professor James Smith is the inaugural Director of the Freemasons Centre for Male Health and Wellbeing – Northern Territory (FCMHW-NT) based at Menzies School of Health Research.

In 2019, Professor Smith was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Senior Scholarship from the Fulbright Commission to undertake a program of learning and to develop future collaborations in the United States around health promotion strategies aimed at reducing health inequities among young men of colour. 

A focus of the FCMHW-NT Division program is Indigenous health and wellbeing, migrant health and wellbeing, and equity and health. Given the alignment of research interests, the Fulbright program was an important opportunity for Professor Smith to develop collaborative health promotion and health policy program opportunities. 

Professor Smith was based in the US for the program in early-mid 2020. This included 2 ½ weeks with Professor Derek Griffith (pictured left above) at the Centre for Research on Men’s Health at Vanderbilt University and 3 ½ months with Professor Daphne Watkins (pictured centre) at the Curtis Center for Health Equity Research and Training within the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan.  

During this time, Professor Smith interviewed 40 men’s health scholars, practitioners and policy-makers from across the US with an explicit interest in the health of boys and young men. He also delivered a range of guest lectures and presentations, and while there co-authored papers with Professors Griffith and Watkins relating to equity and men’s health, including

Reducing health inequities facing boys and young men of colour in the United States

and

Strengthening Policy Commitments to Equity and Men’s Health

International Men's Day 2020 - Darwin: Panel focus on young men

On 19th of November, we celebrate International Men’s Day.

International Men’s Day is an annual global event that celebrates the diversity of men and the contributions they bring to their families, their communities and the world. A core focus of International Men’s Day is to highlight positive male role models and raise awareness of male health and wellbeing. The overarching theme of International Men’s Day this year is“Better health for men and boys”.

Jahdai Virona, Indigenous Trainee at the FCMHW NT Division at the Menzies School of Health Research, presented on “Understanding the needs of young men” as an invited panellist of the Youth Panel at the International Men’s Day Forum held in Darwin (19 Nov, 2020). The day long forum and networking event discussed the state of men's health and other issues relating to men in the Northern Territory.

Other speakers at the Forum included Professor Mick Dodson (Aboriginal Treaty Commissioner), Travis Garone (Movember) and Matthew Hull (MATES in Construction).