Candice Peart, MPH, is a public health professional with experience leading and contributing to a diverse range of impactful health projects. She is dedicated to advancing health equity and improving outcomes through her strengths in research, community engagement, and strategic communication. Candice is committed to fostering collaborative efforts that bridge gaps in health disparities and create sustainable, healthier futures for all.

Dr Lewis is a Research Fellow in the Priority Populations Stream of The ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation and the Primary Care Mental Health Research Program in The Department of General Practice of the Melbourne Medical School. He joined the department in June 2018 as the trial manager on the Assertive Cardiac Care Trial (ACCT) which is seeking to improve cardiovascular health in people with severe mental illness. Dr Lewis completed a PhD in psychology and has worked in industry funded clinical trials, Indigenous mental health and cognition, peri-operative cognitive change, dementia research and roles in industry assisting with cognitive test development and research. A key focus of this work has been investigating the intersection of physical health, mental health and cognition and things that can impact on these factors and ways these can be improved. Dr Lewis has published widely in all these areas.

Dr Jennifer Bibb is the lead research fellow within the Co-Design Living Labs Network. Jen is an early career researcher with interdisciplinary research spanning across co-design, participatory design, creative arts therapies and qualitative methods. She has 22 publications (18 first author and 4 last author) and a Field Weighted Citation Index (FWCI) of 1.97 for arts and humanities (cited 2 times more than the average in the field). She has also published three chapters in scientific books on music therapy and mental health. Jen is also a Registered Music Therapist with expertise working in Victorian mental healthcare services for over 10 years before moving into full-time research in 2021. During her time as a mental health clinician, she established new music therapy programs in three of the biggest mental health services in Victoria and her advocacy work has been instrumental to the growth of the music therapy profession in Australia. Jen is the current Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Journal of Music Therapy which is the only Australian academic journal in the field of music therapy. Jen specialises in co-design and participatory approaches to research, using creative arts methods to convene co-design and collaborate with co-design living labs members to transform Australian mental health research, services and systems. Jen’s specific research interests are co-design and creative arts, eating disorders and the role of music in supporting mental health.

Victoria Palmer led the grant proposal for the Special Initiative in Mental Health and a Co-Directors of the ALIVE National Centre. She is internationally recognised for advancing primary care mental health research and for her use of participatory design, experience-based co-design for health systems improvement, and translational science.

Victoria leads a program of research in Primary Care Mental Health where models of lived-experience inform end to end research design to translation through a Co-Design Living Labs model. Victoria is responsible for oversight of Centre activities, research programs and networks, and strategic development of the Centre. She leads the Co-Design Living Labs Network nationally to deliver co-design capabilities and foster community-led co-design.

Cath is Co-lead of the Primary Care Mental Health Program and Senior Research Fellow within the Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne. Cath is the lead researcher on the WiserAD trial [A randomised trial of a Structured Online intervention to Promote and Support Antidepressant De-prescribing in primary care] and an investigator on several other primary care based mental health applied research studies. She is also Senior Research Fellow within the Implementation and Tranlsation Network of the ALIVE National Centre for Research Translation and a Senior Research Fellow for the Translating Research into Primary Health Initiative (TROPHI) Victorian Collaboration, supported by the Windermere Foundation. Cath is currently leading the University of Melbourne team to integrate Professor Gunn’s Link-Me Model of Care into the Department of Health and Aged Care’s Head to Health Mental Health Website. She is the University of Melbourne representative on the steering committee of the national MAGNET Mental health network.

Phil’s introduction to health sector was a role with the Housing & Supportive Initiative supporting patients with lived experience develop skills to maintain independent living within the southwest of Sydney. Then moved into the primary care sector as an Aboriginal health worker with the then Medicare local and eventually Primary Health Network for southwest Sydney region and central and eastern PHNs. During that time, Phil had gained a passion to design and deliver cultural awareness training that that can be applied during clinical consults for the benefit of the community and patients translating his knowledge for clinician to practice. Phil was the Patient Experience and Consumer Engagement officer for the Agency for Innovation, where he designed a systematic approach to connecting with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities of NSW that is embedded within a state-wide organisation effectively apply Aboriginal considerations within clinical pathways of the communities journey through the NSW health system ensuring cultural safety.

Amy is a mental health researcher with over 15 years of experience spanning both the not-for-profit and academic sectors. For the past decade, she has been a key part of the Primary Care Mental Health Team in the Department of General Practice and Primary Care (DGPPC), where she has built up expertise in clinical trials, participant recruitment, research ethics, and evaluation. With a background in Psychology, Amy is a mixed-methods researcher and has used realist evaluation and behaviour change theory to deliver meaningful insights that influence how we approach patient-centred mental health care in primary care.

Currently, Amy is leading research and evaluation for a new mental health model of care in general practice, including the implementation of the Link-me prognosis tool for mental health risk. She also plays a central role in WiserAD, Australia’s first antidepressant deprescribing intervention, which helps patients make informed decisions about stopping their medication safely. Amy’s PhD (completed in 2024) was a deeper investigation of the factors that make antidepressant deprescribing successful in primary care. This has shaped her current research interests in further exploring these factors and how they impact or are impacted by the patient-prescriber relationship.

In addition to these projects, Amy is involved in The MiND Study which is testing for a blood biomarker for the diagnosis of neurogenerative disease. She is also an investigator on a project focused on building capacity in GPs and residential aged care staff to better support the mental health needs of older Australians. Amy is also an investigator on the A-Part of the Crowd project, funded by the Medibank Health Foundation, which tackles loneliness and wellbeing among young Australians.