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

Cancer Council Women in Leadership Award: Professor Lisa Butler

Professor Lisa Butler, Member of FCMHW SA Management Group and Head of Prostate Cancer Laboratory (The University of Adelaide & South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute), has been awarded $50,000 as part of Cancer Council’s Women in Leadership Awards.

The Women in Leadership Awards, established in 2020, recognises women who are leading the way in South Australian cancer research. Cancer Council SA Chief Executive Lincoln Size said that the four women awarded are true leaders in their field and was proud to be able to recognise their efforts through the award.

Professor Butler’s award will support fresh prostate cancer tissue collection and biobanking from consenting patients who are undergoing surgery for prostate cancer in Adelaide.

“This collection is essential for my research program, which is unique in its use of fresh and archival prostate specimens to maximise clinical translation of our laboratory research findings,” she said.

Major support from the Hospital Research Foundation for prostate cancer research

The Centre congratulates two of its post-doctoral research fellows, Dr Zeyad Nassar and Dr Maggie Centenera, from the Prostate Cancer Research Group at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute on both being awarded research grants ($149,956 and $149,662 respectively) from the Hospital Research Foundation in its recently announced round.

Dr Nassar’s research will be targeting fatty acid oxidation for treatment of high risk localised prostate cancer, while Dr Centenera’s research will explore a patient-derived discovery platform for companion biomarker development in prostate cancer.

We acknowledge and thank the South Australian community for their generous donations to the Hospital Research Foundation to enable this research.

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