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As we progress through the second quarter of 2025 and the colder months settle in, it’s a fitting time to reflect on recent achievements and look ahead with optimism. The past few months have brought exciting milestones across Sydney ID including grant successes, new publications, engaging events, and the continued momentum of our EMCR development program.
We are pleased to welcome Associate Professor Victoria Brookes, Dr Kerrie Wiley, and Dr Alison Peel as the new leaders of our One Health Special Interest Group (SIG). Collectively, they bring a wealth of expertise and vision. Their leadership will be instrumental in strengthening a dynamic, collaborative, and impactful One Health community.
We also extend our sincere thanks to Professor Ruth Zadoks , Associate Professor Katrina Bosward and Dr Michael Walsh for their exceptional leadership and longstanding contributions to the One Health SIG (previously node). They will continue to work with the new leadership team during this transition period.
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Congratulations to Sydney ID member Melody Taba on the award of her PhD with no emendations.
Melody’s thesis was titled ‘Optimising health communication to young people via social media in public health emergencies’. It included a survey of young people’s COVID-19 information sources, a content analysis of Australian health department COVID-19 social media messaging and an interview and co-design process to develop a framework to improve social media health communication to young people in future health emergencies.
Her work was supported by a Sydney ID EMCR Seed grant, which allowed her to conduct the interview and co-design process with young people and professional health communicators at Australian health departments.
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The Sydney Health Literacy Lab, in collaboration with Sydney ID, has launched a new framework to improve social media health communication to young people, especially tailored for health emergency contexts. The co-designed framework is applicable across a wide range of health topics and platforms, including Instagram and TikTok
As social media becomes an increasingly dominant source of health information for young people, the need for clear, credible and engaging digital communication has never been more critical. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of reaching young audiences quickly and effectively online, whilst also exposing the risks of misinformation and disengagement when communication misses the mark. Previous research by the study team found that Australian health departments rarely used their social media accounts to share COVID-19 messages for young people, and when they did, they infrequently shared on platforms popular with the age-group, nor used formats that appealed to younger audiences.
Funded as a Sydney ID Seed Grant, framework development involved an extensive co-design process across 3 workshops with 21 young people (aged 18-24) and 4 health communicators from Australian health departments. The framework which includes 5 key recommendations with “youth approved” examples is now available online. The full research article was published earlier in Health Expectations.
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MRFF E-Asia grant success
Congratulations to our Sydney ID members Professor Vitali Sintchenko (CIA) and Professor Ben Marais (CIB), Xiaomei Zhang (CIC), along with collaborators Warwick Britton, Eby Sim, Elena Martinez, Connie Lam, and Ellen Donnan (CIs), on their newly awarded $750,000 NHMRC eAsia grant for a project investigating the mechanisms and clinical relevance of resistance to novel anti-tuberculosis (TB) drugs.
With TB remaining the leading cause of death from infectious disease globally, this important research will generate critical evidence to inform patient care and strengthen TB control efforts across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. It links strongly with work done within the TB-CRE and the WHO CC in TB
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Faculty of Medicine and Health Baludarri Meeting
Sydney ID members and Horizon Fellows, Nick Fancourt and Archita Mishra delivered outstanding presentations on their respective areas of research at the Baludarri (Westmead) Precinct Faculty Meeting. The meeting was chaired by our Interim Executive Dean Nancy Baxter and was a fantastic opportunity to highlight impactful research led by our new generation of research leaders.
We're proud to see Sydney ID researches shaping the future of infectious diseases research.
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Emdedding social science into public health and disease control: Informing best practice for the Australian Centre for Disease Control
Congratulations to another Sydney ID Horizon Fellow, Kerrie Wiley for completing a study on global best practice regarding the inclusion of social science expertise in public health decision-making. The study provided evidence-based reccomendations to support the new Australian CDC. Kerrie did the work as part of The Collaboration on Social Science and Immunisation (COSSI) CDC Working Group.
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 | Western Sydney Showcase
Cameron Webb represented Sydney ID at the Western Sydney Showcase. The showcase hosted an interesting and diverse range of speakers with a clear and strong level of engagement within Western Sydney.
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Kesteven Medal
Congratulations to Jenny-Ann Toribio on being awarded the Kestevan Medal by the Australian Veterinary Association.
The Kestevan medal is awarded to an Australian veterinarian in recognition of distringuished contribution to international veterinary science.
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 | Sydney ID Camden Showcase
Sydney ID recently hosted a showcase at the Centre for Carbon, Food and Water in Camden. The event featured a series of presentations from our colleagues in Sydney School of Veterinary Science, along with guided tours of research facilities. The showcase received overwhelmingly positive feedback, reflecting the depth of expertise and collaborative spirit across our community.
| |  | TB-CRE Annual Research Symposium
Xiaomei Zhang and Jan-Wilem Alffenaar presented at the annual TB-CRE Symposium in Sydney.
Xiaomei presented her world-leading work on genomic tempero-spatial mapping of TB cases in NSW. Jan-Wilem spoke on personalised TB treatment.
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- Registration now open for the upcoming 2025 ASID Emerging Respiratory Disease Symposium. Being held in Sydney (CPC auditorium) from 1-2 August 2025. The theme for the event is: One Health Approaches to Tackling Emerging Infectious Threats
- The SABA BacChat Seminar Series provides a research community focused on basic bacterial biology and drug development with fortnightly in -person meetings. SABA is a partnership between Centre for Drug Discovery Innovation (DDI) and Sydney ID. The next guest speaker is Prof Martina Sanderson-Smith ( Director of the Molecular Horizons UoW).
- A new Australian Vaccinology Course will be held in partnership with NCIRS from 28 - 30 August 2025 at the Q Station, Manly. The course is designed for professionals seeking a deep, evidence-based understanding of vaccines, immunology and vaccination programs.
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PUBLICATIONS- Meru Sheel, The Conversation. Measles cases are surging globally. Should children be vaccinated earlier?
- Mikaela Coleman,Phoebe C M Williams, Ben J Marais. Pub Med. Transgression of planetary boundaries and the effects on child health through an infectious diseases lens - PubMed
- Nicole Batten, Kerrie Wiley. Social and Behavioual Insights in Immunisation. Embedding social science into public health and disease control: Informing best practice for the Australian Centre for Disease Control - SABII
- Archana Koriala, Matthew.V. O'Suillivan, Jen Kok,Thomas Snelling, Dominic Dwyer, Kristine Macartney. Preprints with The Lancet. Seroprevalence of Japanese Encephalitis Virus and Other Flavivirus-Specific Antibodies Among Blood Donors in Australia Following a Novel Epidemic Spread of Japanese Encephalitis Virus::
- Aaron P Jenkins. The Lancet. A call to action: the second Lancet Commission on adolescent health and wellbeing - The Lancet
- Melody Taba, Julie Ayre, Kirsten McCaffery, Julie Leask, Carissa Bonner. Wiley Online Library. Co‐Designing a Framework for Social Media Health Communication to Young People: A Participatory Research Study - Taba - 2025 - Health Expectations - Wiley Online Library
- Melody Taba, Carissa Bonner. InSight. How to use social media for health communication with young people | InSight+
- Meru Sheel, Cyra Patel, Gemma Saravanos, Adeline Tinessia. JMIR Publications, Advancing Digital health & Open Sciences. JMIR Research Protocols - Strengthening Immunization Data: Protocol for the Evaluation of an Electronic Immunization Register
- Meru Sheel. CSIRO, public health research & practice. CSIRO PUBLISHING | Public Health Research and Practice
- Claudio Counoupas, Caroline Ashley, Gabriella Scandurra, Warwick Britton, Megan Steain, Jamie Triccas. Npj vaccines. An adjuvanted chimeric spike antigen boosts lung-resident memory T-cells and induces pan-sarbecovirus protective immunity | npj Vaccines
- Matthew Berger, Cristyn Davies, Ramon Shaban, Shopna Bag. Elesevier Science Direct. Perceived safety, usability, and acceptability of microarray patches for vaccination among key populations: A mixed methods study - ScienceDirect
- Kenya Fernandes. ABC News. Australian sugarbag honey from stingless bees found to have antimicrobial properties - ABC News
- Phoebe Williams. The Conversation. Australia’s whooping cough surge is not over – and it doesn’t just affect babies
- Phoebe Williams. The Conversation. Spit or swallow? What’s the best way to deal with phlegm?
- Phoebe Williams. The Conversation. What are the symptoms of measles? How long does the vaccine last? Experts answer 6 key questions
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