WORDS FROM OUR PRESIDENT
I am still thrumming with ideas, memories, reflections and pride after ASSBI’s annual conference early in May in Sydney. What a fabulous showcase of the outstanding multidisciplinary research and practice being done by ASSBI members – we do meaningful, person-centred, evidence-based and innovative work to make lives better for people living with brain conditions. All the platform and datablitz presentations, posters, how-to sessions, lived experience panel, keynote addresses and workshops were of the highest quality and truly engaging. The conference venue and catering were also top notch which enhanced the experience deliciously. I’m still thinking about that sashimi and those dumplings at the welcome reception! Congratulations to Elise Bogart and the organising committee, the student team led by Nicole Feast, and of course Margaret and Matt Eagers, for putting together such a fantastic conference. Thank you also to everyone who has sent lovely messages about the impact of the conference for them via email and social media. It’s such a wonderful community we have. I look forward to reading the full conference report in the Professional Development section of this newsletter.
During the conference, we had the opportunity to meet with several members of our new ASSBI lived experience sub-committee. We spoke about the role of this sub-committee, which will be to develop and expand ASSBI’s activities in ways that are driven by people with lived experience of brain conditions. There are many exciting opportunities here, including providing accessible information and resources about the latest research to people with lived experience whose lives can benefit from that research. Our first steps will be to co-develop a Terms of Reference document for the lived experience committee, which will then guide the priorities and next step for the coming year and beyond.
ASSBI’s 2023 Annual Report was distributed at our recent AGM and is a surprisingly good read! At the AGM we spoke about ways to expand our membership, particularly early career clinicians and researchers. Stay tuned for developments and initiatives around that. We are also hoping to recruit executive committee members from outside Australia. It was great to see many of our excellent New Zealand colleagues at the ASSBI conference and discuss the synergies between the work we are doing.
The program for the Global Neuropsychology Congress in Porto in July (for which ASSBI is a co-host) has been announced. It looks excellent and features numerous presenters from our ASSBI community. Can’t wait! I’m also looking forward to our 2025 7th Pacific Rim conference in Brisbane – it has just been confirmed that the APS College of Clinical Neuropsychologists will be partnering with ASSBI and INS for this conference. We are excited to have the opportunity to work together again and put together what will undoubtedly be another excellent conference reflecting the shared focus of all three organisations on optimising research and practice in neuropsychology and brain conditions across the lifespan.
Dana Wong, President, ASSBI
