Keynote speakers

Professor Ian Couper

BA (Wits), MBBCh (Wits), MFamMed (Medunsa), FCFP (SA)

South Africa

Professor Ian Couper is Principal Specialist in Rural Medicine, North West Provincial Department of Health, South Africa, and Professor of Rural Health at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg.

He is director of the Wits Centre for Rural Health.

He is a family physician by training, and is currently acting head of the Wits Department of Family Medicine.

His areas of activity are in health service development, supporting rural students, undergraduate and postgraduate education, research and advocacy. These interests were nurtured during nine years spent in a rural district hospital in northern KwaZuluNatal province.

He was active in the formation of the Rural Doctors Association of Southern Africa (RuDASA) more than 12 years ago, and currently chairs the Working Party on Rural Practice of the World Organisation of Family Doctors (Wonca).

He serves as editor of the African section of the international journal Rural and Remote Health.

John CS Wootton, M.D., C.M.

Canada

Dr Wootton has had a long and distinguished career in rural practice. He was recently elected President of the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada, an organisation he joined as a founding member in 1992.

His earlier practices were in British Columbia (Ocean Falls), Ontario (Sioux Lookout), and Quebec (Wakefield). For the past 25 years he as worked in the Pontiac region of West Quebec where his practice includes primary care, emergency room coverage, in-patient care, and obstetrics, as well a hospital administrative position as Director of Professional Services at the CSSS du Pontiac (hospital and health services).

He contributed to the launch of RuralMed and started the Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine. He remained the journal’s founding scientific editor until 2008 when he joined the SRPC executive. He lives on an island in the Ottawa River where he shares a century old brick farmhouse with his partner, her teenage children, and her miniature horses.

Dr. Wootton spent much of his childhood in rural Brazil. He returned to Canada with his family when he was 12. He completed an undergraduate degree in English and Philosophy at the University of Toronto before enrolling in entered medicine at McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1978, followed by a rotating internship in Toronto.

Professor John Wakerman

Australia

Professor John Wakerman is the Inaugural Director of the Centre for Remote Health, a Joint Centre of Flinders University and Charles Darwin University, in Alice Springs. He is a Public Health Medicine specialist with a long background in remote primary health care services as a medical practitioner, senior manager and researcher.

He works in general practice in Alice Springs. He is an active advocate for rural and remote health issues. For the past several years his research has focused on the nature of sustainable PHC services to remote and small rural communities.

Professor John Humphreys

Australia

John Humphreys is Professor of Rural Health Research in the School of Rural Health at Monash University Bendigo. John is well known for his academic expertise and research on health service provision in rural and remote areas of Australia, rural workforce recruitment and retention, rural health policy and the evaluation of rural health programs.

He has undertaken extensive fieldwork throughout rural and remote regions of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, and has published widely in books and journals. In addition to his academic career, John has worked in both the Victorian and the Commonwealth Departments of Health.

John has taken a lead role in developing National Rural Health Policies and has been a member of numerous government Rural Health Advisory Committees.