New President of Australasian Injury Prevention Network
Associate Professor Debbie Scott
Associate Professor Debbie Scott appointed new President of Australasian Injury Prevention Network.
New AIPN President
The Monash Addiction Research Centre (MARC) would like to congratulate its member, Associate Professor Debbie Scott, on being elected President of the Australasian Injury Prevention Network.
Associate Professor Scott has been a member of AIPN for over twenty years and has served as the chair of the sub-committee on alcohol and other drugs in injury and the sub-committee on intentional injury.
“I’m very excited about the challenge and am honoured that people I work with
would consider me worthy of taking on this role,” Associate Professor Scott said.
“Our former president Ben Beck has taken Injury Prevention to new heights, so I have huge shoes to fill.”
Dr Ben Beck, who is also a member of MARC, said he is excited that Associate Professor Scott is stepping into the role.
“Associate Professor Scott brings strong leadership, deep partnerships, passion and a new level of energy that will continue to drive the AIPN forward," Dr Beck said
A passion for injury prevention
Associate Professor Scott is a public health researcher with a background in nursing. She is a member of the Monash Addiction Research Centre and the Strategic Lead for the National Addiction and Mental Health Surveillance Unit at Turning Point.
“Alcohol and other drugs is a cross cutting issue in over a million types of injuries. If we can reduce the effect of alcohol and other drugs it will necessarily impact on the burden of injury, and could have a massive impact.”
Associate Professor Scott’s interest in injury prevention began while working as a paediatric nurse and studying her masters.
“I would see kids coming in with injuries and I remember thinking we should be stopping this from happening in the first place.”
“Whilst doing my masters my lecturer was working in injury prevention and would talk a lot about what was happening in that space. I became immediately fascinated, and ever since, injury prevention has been my passion.”
The future of AIPN
Since taking up the role as President, Associate Professor Scott has been involved in planning the bi-annual Injury Prevention conference for next year.
“These conferences are really exciting and a great place to exchange thinking on the broad topic of injury prevention within our injury prevention community, but next year is especially exciting.
“The theme of the conference is about shared knowledge with Indigenous people and how we can learn from them to effect change, not only within Indigenous communities who bear a higher burden of injury, but also across the broader community.”
AIPN is also looking forward to the upcoming launch of a new National Injury Prevention Strategy which will also acknowledge the role of alcohol and other drugs in injury.
“We want to advocate to get injury prevention on the government's agenda as a significant issue and have the AIPN as the key agency people and government bodies come to for understanding injury prevention and how to make meaningful change and reduce the burden of injury across the Australian and New Zealand populations.”