Meet the Training Team
Professor Lena Sanci
Professor Lena is the Medical Advisor to the Doctors-in-Secondary Schools (DiSS) program and Head of the Department of General Practice and Primary Health, University of Melbourne. Lena has been invovled with the program since it’s inception in 2015. Lena led the work involved in designing the model of care adopted by the program. For the past 20 years, Professor Sanci has been researching the potential of primary care to improve the health of young people through system-based interventions, and through training using evidence-based strategies for learning and change in clinicians, including the use of young people as coaches for clinicians. Her research focus includes the potential of technology to assist young people navigate their way to appropriate services.
Dr Simone Craig
Dr Simone Craig (she/her) is a General Practitioner and lecturer for the Victorian Government Doctors in Secondary Schools Program within the Department of General Practice and Primary Care at The University of Melbourne. She has extensive experience working with marginalised young people, families and their communities, in a variety of primary care settings including government and non-government organisation funded youth health services, private practice and school-based health services.
Dr Bianca Forrester
Bianca is the training program manager and has been involved in the DiSS program since the first schools were onboarded in 2016. She has been an education consultant and training facilitator since the first training term and was engaged to lead implementation workshops and to develop program guidelines, in the first two years of the program. Bianca is an adolescent health specialising GP living and working in regional Victoria and is the GP at North Geelong Secondary School. She is an experienced education facilitator, clinical lecturer at UoM and Deakin and runs Project ECHO education sessions through the West Vic PHN in response to the COVID19 Pandemic.
Sam Parkin
Sam Parkin (she/her) is the Project Coordinator for the Doctors in Secondary Schools Clinical Training Program at The University of Melbourne, Department of General Practice and Primary Care. She has extensive experience working in a variety of student support roles at The University of London and The University of Melbourne with a recent focus on graduate cohorts – Honours, Doctor of Medicine, and Graduate Research. Sam is also Program Manager with the Infectious Disease Surveillance and Stewardship in Primary Care research program.
Dr Ann-Maree Duncan
Dr Ann-Maree Duncan BSc(Hons), PhD is a Research Support Officer for the Children and Young People’s Health Research team in the Department of General Practice and Primary Care. Ann-Maree has extensive experience in managing the administrative processes that support primary care research, such as grant and ethics applications. She also has experience in literature searches and preparation of literature reviews, and in writing for a wide variety of audiences.
Kate Fowler
Kate is the Communications Coordinator with the Department of General Practice and Primary Care. She has 18 years' experience in developing and implementing strategic communication plans for corporate, government and health sector clients. Kate specialises in translating complex concepts into every day language that is clear, concise and easy to understand.