Consumer Reference Group
About the ICH Consumer Reference Group
Established at the beginning of 2021, the ICH Consumer Reference Group (CRG) is a vibrant and diverse means of ensuring patients, service users, carers and patient advocates are an integral component of everything we do.
With members across Australia meeting virtually every 6-8 weeks, the ICH CRG engages on all aspects of our health communication research, including communication in end-of-life care, clinical handovers, dialysis consent and shared decision making procedures and communication of diagnostic uncertainty.
As well as collaborating on established projects, the CRG’s core work includes:
- identifying communication issues that create risks for patient safety and quality of care;
- developing research proposals to address these issues;
- collecting and analysing data; and
- contributing to writing and circulating findings to the public.
For more information about the scope of the ICH CRG you can read our Terms of Reference here:
CRG Facilitators
Liza Goncharov liza.goncharov@anu.edu.au
Elizabeth Fewster elizabeth.fewster@anu.edu.au
Membership
If you are a patient, service user, carer or patient advocate with a particular interest in communication in healthcare settings, we welcome applications to the CRG. We recommend you familiarise yourself with the ICH’s current and past projects and then contact the CRG Facilitators.
Current members of the ICH Consumer Reference Group include:
| Dr Ann Lawless | Dr Ann Lawless is a health consumer representative in the Australian Capital Territory, with experience as a health consumer rep in WA, Tasmania, SA and rural NSW. She has an active and long term commitment in health advocacy and activism, with special interests in health communication (such as concordance and shared decision making), transcultural heath, health research, quality issues in health, and universal health care. She is interested in how diversity and diverse approaches to research engage participants, especially from those marginalised from health care. |
| Ms Sandy Thomson | Sandy Thomson is a health consultant specialising is preparing organisations for accreditation, and providing training in governance, risk management quality and safety. Sandy has a long term commitment to improving consumer engagement not only at the individual level through a focus on partnering and shared decision making but also at an organisation level to improve consumer influence in business decision making especially where direct and indirect impacts (positive and negative) for consumers are occurring through governance systems. |
| Dr Brian Osborne | Dr Brian Osborne has 12 years experience as a Consumer Advisor with NSW Health (Ministry of Health, Clinical Excellence Commission, Emergency Care Institute), Consumers Health Forum, Health Consumers NSW and was Chair of the Hornsby Ku-Ring-Gai Consumer Participation Committee. He is a retired biochemist with 37 years professional experience and a many years of volunteering in education, policing, senior’s affairs as well as health. He has held senior industry and academic appointments in plant and food science in the UK and Australia. |
| Janney Wale | Dr Janney Wale lives in Melbourne. She grew up in country Victoria and has previously lived in rural and urban Western Australia and England. Janney was working as a biomedical researcher before she became a consumer advocate, as a result of her own health issues. Her particular interests are communication in healthcare, informed consent, diagnosis and prognosis, evidence-based healthcare, healthcare standards and quality of care, use of electronic medical records and consumer involvement in health technology assessment. |
| Marg Fagan | Marg Fagan’s career has spanned 40 years in the health care industry, most recently as a senior executive of a private hospital, her clinical and business expertise providing a unique perspective. Marg has also completed a Graduate Certificate in Health Management. Marg was, and remains, passionate about health care during her career, bringing professionalism, empathy, caring and fairness to the role and saw, as a natural step, to become a consumer advocate to continue to assist in improving the quality of healthcare for all. Marg is a member of several consumer organisations including Consumer Health Forum, Health Consumers NSW, in addition as a consumer advisor at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, and several committees at the Agency for Clinical Innovation. Research is of great interest to Marg as she has been involved in the care of her sister who has an auto immune disease where research into treatment has improved her quality of life. Another research project Marg is currently involved in is Patient Reported Measures NHMRC Partnership Project with NSW Health. Marg is currently learning French and is looking forward to immersing herself in the all things of French culture when she next travels to France. |
| Laila Hallam | Laila became an accidental advocate for her father during his decade-long battle with severe illness and witnessing the impact of the health system response. Tortured with a rapidly failing body, and losing his ability to speak, Laila took on her father's voice as illness took his. Laila is a current Board member of the Clinical Excellence Commission (CEC), Chair of multiple consumer groups, including the Consumer Leaders in Health Collective, and an Honorary Associate with The Leeder Centre for Health Policy at the University of Sydney. She sits on the University of Sydney Clinical Governance and Quality Committee reporting to the University Senate Performance and Risk Committee; and is the independent Consumer Leader on The Partnering with Consumers Advisory Group of the Australian Commission of Safety and Quality in Healthcare. She is a consumer leader in governance, policy, service design, research and author who partners with the NSW Ministry of Health, The University of Sydney, University of Wollongong, Health Consumers NSW, Consumer Health Forum, Royal College of Pathologists, NHMRC, Commonwealth Ministry of Health, is an assessor with the MRFF, and until recently, with Sydney Local Health District. |