Professor Marita McCabe is a highly regarded academic who conducts theoretical and applied research in the areas of body image disorders, aging, depression, sexual health and the mental health and wellbeing of Indigenous people across the lifespan. She has published more than 400 refereed articles in these areas. Professor Marita McCabe is the Team Leader of the Health and Ageing Research Group at Swinburne University of Technology. She has conducted a range of research studies to address depression and behavioural problems associated with dementia among older people. Her research team and postgraduate students have investigated the prevalence of depression among older people in both residential and community care and have developed and evaluated a staff training program to assist them to detect depression among older people. These projects have been supported by research grants from beyondblue and Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council. Professor McCabe has also led a research team of staff and postgraduate students to implement and evaluate a staff training program to assist them to better manage behavioural problems associated with dementia. This program both reduced the behavioural problems, as well as staff burnout. These projects have been supported by funding from NHMRC, ARC, Alzheimer’s Australia and beyondblue. Most recently, professor McCabe has been conducting research to improve the physical and mental health of family carers of people with dementia in the community, as well as developing training programs for staff to promote resident choice and control (i.e. Consumer Directed Care) in residential aged care facilities. In the last 10 years she has obtained more than $12 million in Category One research funding. She is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and a member of the Clinical, Health and Forensics Colleges of the APS. She is Associate Editor of Journal of Sexual Medicine and Body Image and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Sex Research as well as two other Journals.

Dr Helen Lindner is based at the Australian Psychological Society Institute in the role of Senior Educational Content Expert. Helen is a registered health psychologist in Australia and has used motivational interviewing strategies with clients undergoing injury recovery, post-surgery recovery and chronic illness management difficulties. Helen is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society, a Fellow of the College of Health Psychologists, and was co-chair for the 2016 International Congress in Behavioral Medicine. Helen developed and ran the motivational interviewing (MI) and health behaviour change (HBC) training program for a Beijing-based behavioural medicine intervention for patients with chronic disease. She was a key member of the government-funded project titled the Good Life Club (GLC), which included training a wide range of health practitioners in MI and HBC assessment and intervention skills. She was also a scientist on the World Health Organisation project tilted Adherence to long term therapies: Evidence for action.

Marie Caltabiano is an Associate Professor of Psychology at James Cook University Cairns. She is a committee member of the national executive of the APS College of Health Psychologists and is the Associate Editor for Health Psychology for the journal Australian Psychologist.