Contributors

Brian Whitacre

Associate Professor and Extension Economist, Oklahoma State University

Bernadette Melnyk

Dean and Professor of Nursing, The Ohio State University Dean, Associate Vice President for Health Promotion, Chief Wellness Officer melnyk.15@osu.edu 120 Newton Hall 1585 Neil Avenue Columbus, OH 43210 Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk serves as Associate Vice President for Health Promotion, University Chief Wellness Officer, and Professor and Dean of the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University. She also is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Ohio State’s College of Medicine. Dr. Melnyk’s groundbreaking work spans evidence-based practice, intervention research, child and adolescent mental health, and health and wellness. In 2013, Dr. Melnyk became one of the few women and nurses elected to the Institute of Medicine – a division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine whose members counsel government and private sector leaders to help them make informed health decisions. Election to the IOM is among the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. Appointed by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials, Dr. Melnyk also served a four-year term on the 16-member United States Preventive Services Task Force. That independent group of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine works to improve the health of all Americans by making evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services such as screenings, counseling services, or preventive medications. She founded the National Interprofessional Education and Practice Collaborative to advance the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Million Hearts® initiative and its goal of preventing one million heart attacks and strokes by 2017. Dr. Melnyk also founded the National Consortium for Building Healthy Academic Communities, a collaborative organization to improve population health in the nation’s institutions of higher learning. Since arriving at Ohio State in 2011, Dr. Melnyk has overseen significant steps toward establishing the nursing program there among the nation’s elite. In 2015, OSU’s master’s program in nursing was named among the nation’s top 25 by U.S. News and World Report – putting it among the top five percent of nursing programs nationwide – and the College of Nursing was designated by USN&WR as one America’s top 10 for both master’s and undergraduate online education. Also in 2015, the OSU College of Nursing received a $1 million gift from FloAnn and John Easton to establish an endowed professorship for child and adolescent health – an important step toward improving health outcomes for a key at-risk population. Dr. Melnyk has secured more than $19 million in sponsored funding from federal agencies as principal investigator and her findings have appeared in more than 280 publications. In 2002, she received the Jessie Scott Award from the American Nurses Association, recognizing her work to improve health care quality through the integration of research, education and practice. And Dr. Melnyk has been named one of the most 30 influential nursing deans by The Mometrix Blog, which based its selections on data including awards, Top 10 rankings, NIH funding, and NCLEX passing percentage. Dr. Melnyk is co-editor of four books, including Evidence-based Practice in Nursing & Healthcare: A Guide to Best Practice, Implementing EBP: Real World Success Stories, A Practical Guide to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Screening, Early Intervention, and Health Promotion (2nd Ed), and Intervention Research: Designing, Conducting, Analyzing and Funding, an American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award winner. Dr. Melnyk earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from West Virginia University, her Master of Science degree with a specialization in nursing care of children and pediatric nurse practitioner from the University of Pittsburgh, and her PhD in clinical research from the University of Rochester – where she also completed her post-master’s certificate as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. She is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Nursing, the National Academies of Practice and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners.

James McCaw

Associate Professor in Mathematical Biology, University of Melbourne James McCaw is a mathematical biologist and epidemiologist and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2011 – 15) at the University of Melbourne. After obtaining a PhD in theoretical physics in 2005, he turned his interests to a recognised needs area in Australia – mathematical modelling of infectious diseases to inform public health policy. He now holds a teaching and research position split between the School of Mathematics & Statistics and the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. He also holds an honorary appointment at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. James’ interests range from the application of mathematics to problems in basic biology through to multi-scale integrated health policy analyses.

Beth Webster

Director, Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology Professor Beth Webster is the Director of the Centre for Transformative Innovation at Swinburne University of Technology. Her area of study is the economics of how knowledge is created and diffuses through the economy. On these topics alone she has authored over 100 articles in outlets such as RAND Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law & Economics and Cambridge Journal of Economics. She has been appointed to a number of committees including the Lomax-Smith Base funding Review; CEDA Advisory Council; the Bracks Automotive review; the Advisory Council for Intellectual Property; the European Policy for Intellectual Property Association; the Economic Society of Victoria and the Asia Pacific Innovation Conference. She is also holds honorary research positions at the Universities of Melbourne, Oxford and Tasmania. She has a PhD (economics) from the University of Cambridge and economics degrees from Monash University.

Adrian Pokorny

Clinical Associate Lecturer in Medicine, University of Sydney

Aaron Humphrey

Ph.D. Candidate in Media, University of Adelaide I am a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer at the University of Adelaide, where I am writing a thesis about the use of comics in education. I teach media policy and law and media research methods. My academic writing has been published in Media International Australia, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Composition Studies, The Comics Grid, and Comics Forum. I am also a founder and co-organiser of Inkers and Thinkers Symposium, Australia's largest academic conference about graphic narratives, sponsored by the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice.