This week's PODCAST with Mario Corena & ''Vogliamoci Bene'', we welcome in Studio Sanremo special guest Professor Billie Bonevski.

Billie is currently the Professor and Lead of Public Health, College of Medicine & Public Health, Flinders University.

Billie Bonevski is a Behavioural Scientist and Professor of Public Health with 25 years experience in health and medical research. She has worked with the Cancer Council NSW, Hunter Area Health Service and most recently the University of Newcastle where she is an Honorary Professor. Following her PhD she spent a year at Oxford University on a WHO-funded fellowship at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Cochrane Collaboration Tobacco Addiction Review Group. Billie has been a research fellow (Cancer Institute NSW and NHMRC funded) and research leader (Women in Science Chair, University of Newcastle).

Since 2021, Billie has been Discipline Group Lead of Public Health at the College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University where she provides strategic leadership to eight diverse disciplines. Billie's research interests are broad, committed to preventing disease and reducing health disparities. In particular, she and her team are internationally recognised for their tobacco control and smoking cessation research and impact. 

In 2022, Billie was named one of the top 20 Smoking Cessation researchers in the world in a bibliometric analysis, one of only two Australians on the list. She has won institutional, national and international awards for research excellence, supervision and mentorship, and leadership and service. 

As a Chief Investigator on 19 NHMRC and 6 MRFF grants, CIA on 10 of these, her research program has had continuous NHMRC funding for the last 13 years.
In total, she has attracted over $40 million in research funding as CI, $30 million of that in Category 1 grants. In 2021 she was part of an international consortia awarded an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence for Achieving the Tobacco Endgame (CIB and co-Director).She has published 230 peer-reviewed articles, over 70% in Q1 journals, and one in four of her papers include international co-authors.

Her highly cited research has led to methodological advancements, influenced national health policy and informed program delivery in community-based health services with substantial impact. 

In this Podcast we ask Billie the following :
1. Just to set the scene, tell us a bit about yourself. Where were you born, your early years etc.
2 . Why did you choose your current career. Was there a passion? Was there some lived experience that drove you to it?
3. So what have been the steps(ie Universities you have been at) to where you are today? Can you tell us of any highs and lows?
4. What does a behavioural scientist do, especially in health?
5. Have you seen big differences during your time?
6. Do you concentrate more on adults than children? 7. What are projects that you are currently working on? And any new ones in the horizon?
8. Do you ever take Mental Health into consideration with your studies? 
9. What can we as individuals do better going forward with any of the studies that you have been involved in(ie tobacco, cancer etc).
10. Prevention is often talked about. How do we get the message out there?
11. I'm a firm believer that having a disease like cardiac, cancer etc raises the Mental Health aspects such as anxiety, depression etc and can have an effect on any chance of survival. What is your take on it?
12. What does Billie do to 'Be kind to herself'? After all there are long hours, lots of research, grant writing and getting a successful grant etc. It must take it's toll.

This interview was with a very intelligent woman, who came from the old Yugoslavia as a young girl, to carve a fantastic career and achieve so much in science. She is truly a role model to young girls and women out there.

So don't disappoint yourself, I urge you to listen to this fantastic PODCAST via the link - https://www.radioitaliana531.com.au/vogliamoci-bene---mario-corena-podcast.html

So let's start the conversation today!

Mario Corena
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