Board

Our Board is comprised of members who are dedicated to the values and mission, ‘protecting health through care of the environment’, of Doctors for the Environment Australia.

Providing expertise in a variety of fields, they govern the organisation and work with the Executive Director to ensure the organisation is equipped to meet its goals.

Please use the Contact Us page if you would like to contact any of our Board Members.

John Van Der Kallen

Dr John Van Der Kallen

Chair

John Van Der Kallen FRACP is a Rheumatologist in Newcastle. John grew up in Sydney and graduated from the University of NSW. He spent time training in many rural areas of NSW as well as completing his rheumatology training in Leiden in the Netherlands where it was obvious that the community is healthier without being dependent on cars. He has lived in the Hunter for over 18 years and has seen the Hunter Valley change dramatically with the increase in coal mining. He previously set up the Fracture Liaison Service in the Hunter New England Area Health Service but is now focused on the impacts of climate change on our health. John believes that one of the solutions to climate change is for all of us to reduce our individual emissions to zero or below. Consequently, his wife Jane and himself have a timber plantation, solar panels at home and at work and commute on their bikes as much as possible.

Richard Yin

Dr Richard Yin

Deputy Chair

Richard Yin is a recently retired general practitioner from Perth. He is a long-term member of DEA, previous WA chair and on the current campaigns committee. He is the chair of Green Practice Society a
not-for-profit incorporated society that seeks to inspire doctors, medial professionals and their patients and communities to promote health through living and working sustainably. He runs regular meditation courses, looks after gardens, cooks and enjoys travel.

Kristof Wing

Dr Kristof Wing

Treasurer

Kristof Wing MBBS BMedSci(Hons) is a physician trainee in Darwin who has previously worked in Tasmania and Timor-Leste. He is concerned about the pivotal impact our changing climate is having on food security and the potential for altered communicable disease epidemiology. Having recently moved to the Top End he is currently exploring the impact that dispossession of nature through environmental degradation is having on indigenous and non-indigenous patients alike.

Dr Sonia Chanchlani

Secretary

Sonia’s unique perspective on healthcare delivery includes training in Canada and Ireland, prior to diverse clinical and medical administration experiences in hospital and community medicine across Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Completing a dual Masters of Health Management and Public Health enhanced her awareness of social determinants and the impact on health equity and equality. Her clinical and corporate governance experience was strengthened through training with the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators. Sonia’s has been involved in local and national DEA committees determined to drive systems change across the health sector to achieve social and environmental justice while empowering clinicians and communities.

Dr Georgia Brown

Member

Marion Carey

Dr Marion Carey

Member

Marion Carey MBBS (Hons) MPH FAFPHM is a public health physician with a broad range of experience in government, academia and health organisations. She developed a passion for environmental health working in remote Indigenous communities early in her career. As a senior government adviser in Victoria, she witnessed the health impacts of the 2009 Melbourne heatwave and the Black Saturday bushfires, and helped lead development of climate change and health policy there. As a VicHealth Fellow at Monash University, she pursued interests in the health impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss. She is a Fellow of the Public Health Association of Australia and an adjunct associate professor at the School of Medicine, University of Notre Dame, Sydney. In recent years she has worked as an editor for medical and epidemiology journals. Marion has been involved with DEA since its early years, serving on the management and other committees. Her career has been driven a belief in the importance of “healthy planet, healthy people”. She finds inspiration in the wild places of the earth and in working with like-minded colleagues in DEA. She loves bushwalking, gardening and spending time with family including her beloved border collie..

Kimberly Humphrey

Dr Kimberly Humphrey

Member

Kimberly is an Emergency Medicine Specialist and Public Health medical consultant/Climate Change Lead at SA Health. She is the 2022-2023 Fellow in Climate Change and Human Health at The Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a current Visiting Scholar at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. She is a passionate member and the chair of the SA DEA Committee. She is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide, and holds numerous committee roles within the Australasian College For Emergency Medicine, including many years on the ACEM Public Health and Disaster Committee. Kimberly is also a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide, and is on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Climate Change and Health.

Kimberly works at the intersection between emergency medicine, public health and climate change. Her research is solutions focused with an emphasis on the health impacts of climate change on individuals, health systems and communities, and involves community based interventions, public and preventative health approaches, and building of health system resiliency to enable better responses to climate related disasters and climate related health impacts. She is also particularly passionate about reorienting health systems towards high value, low carbon care!

Outside professional life, Kimberly’s key focus is parenting two very exuberant school aged children.
In her spare time, she enjoys reading and hiking.

Dr Stefanie Pidcock

Member

Dr Stefanie Pidcock commenced on the DEA Board in October 2020. She has been a member of DEA since commencing her medical studies in 2017, and has served as Secretary and Chair of the ACT Branch of DEA. She brings a wealth of expertise and experience in environmental policy and management, as well as organisational financial and staffing management.

Before commencing her medical career, she spent 15 years working in the environment sector across a range of areas. As a science researcher, she studied the ecological impacts of reduced rabbit numbers following the accidental release of rabbit calicivirus. In the Australian Public Service, she worked in policy development and program management in ecological science research, protected area management, regional forest agreements and climate change. Notably, she led teams in the management of the $750 million Green Army Program, and the development of the first National Coastal Vulnerability Assessment to Climate Change.

As a senior consultant in a major Australian consulting firm, she led stakeholder engagement and international convention compliance as part of a team in an Australian Aid project to clean up Persistent Organic Pollutants from 13 Pacific Island Countries, including safe transport by ship to Australia for final destruction.

Her previous board experience comes from two years on the Board of Directors for an ACT Key Arts Organisation, the Watson Arts Centre.

Stefanie has a husband, two children aged 10 and 13, and a dog. She enjoys getting out into nature when she can.

Jumpei Takeuchi

National Student Committee Chair

Jumpei is a medical student at the University of New South Wales, currently undertaking a research degree on Sexual Health and Addiction Medicine.

He is passionate about advocating the philosophy of planetary health and  he has been involved in planetary health advocacy in AMSA, IFMSA and many other organisations since his first year of medical school. 

Jumpei enjoys exploring plant-based recipes in the kitchen, and spending time outdoors with cycling, running, swimming and canyoning