Richard Speare 64th International Conference of the Wildlife Disease Association 2015

Richard Speare

Emeritus Professor Speare is both a public health physician and a veterinary surgeon. His main interests are in control of communicable diseases in human and in animal populations. An emerging area of interest is in how the One Health concept can be implemented for some diseases to improve the efficiency of control strategies. Rick has worked clinically in both medical and veterinary practice. Rick has an extensive history of applied research on communicable diseases, with topics ranging from experimental hookworm infections in humans to global strategies to control chytridiomycosis, a pandemic fungal disease of amphibians. Rick has also been involved in generating evidence to sooth emotionally charged topics such as head lice in primary school children in developed market economies. His eclectic interests add greatly to the capacity, flexibility and adaptability of THS. Rick comes to THS from a long history of academic activities at James Cook University (JCU). He played a major role in assisting JCU to build public health as a significant discipline with the Anton Breinl Centre for Public Health and Tropical Medicine becoming the hub for public health training for health professionals interested in the tropics.