Our Team

Meet some of our members

Eugenie Kayak

Professor Eugenie Kayak

Eugenie Kayak (FANZCA, MBBS, MSc, MPH) is the Enterprise Professor in Sustainable Healthcare at the Melbourne Medical School.

A consultant anaesthetist at both Austin and Alfred Health and in private practice, who has led national advocacy for over a decade from Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA), her own specialty, the AMA and wider medical profession, to raise awareness of, and mitigate, the health impacts of climate change and environmental degradation – including policy and practice change to address health care’s own impact.

Eugenie was a member of the Chief Medical Officer Advisory Group for the development of Australia’s first National Health and Climate Strategy, and a leading advocate for a National Health, Sustainabiltiy and Climate Unit.

Eugenie is Co-convenor of national Sustainable Health Care for DEA, and her work with DEA and the AMA has resulted in Australia’s medical colleges collaborating to advocate for government action on healthcare sustainability and climate change, including for the Australian healthcare sector to reach net zero emissions by 2040.

Eugenie is Deputy Director of the University's Climate CATCH (Collaborative Action for Transformative Change in Health and Healthcare) Lab, leading its cross faculty sustainable healthcare stream and associated activities within the Melbourne Medical School.

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Forbes McGain

Professor Forbes McGain

Forbes is an anaesthetist and intensive care physician at Western Health, Melbourne, Australia, and the inaugural Associate Dean Healthcare Sustainability in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at The University of Melbourne.

Forbes is a founder of the study of healthcare environmental sustainability, including life cycle assessment (LCA). Forbes has pioneered international collaboration on research projects, editorials, and sustainability statements with individual colleagues, medical colleges, and high impact journals. Such sustainable healthcare research has led to: environmental and financial savings, and social benefits at the hospital workplace in Australia and internationally. Further, via such research and Forbes’ engagement, this has led to medical colleges and government policy changes to align with more environmentally sustainable practices.

Forbes is the ANZ College of Intensive Care Medicine’s co-lead of our environmental sustainability working party, an active member of  the World Fed. Of Anaesthesiologists’ Sustainability Committee, and serves on the Lancet Commission for Sustainable Healthcare as the clinical care theme co-leader.

Forbes enjoys being involved in research, teaching and education at the hospital, university and beyond. Forbes remains passionate about making seemingly small environmental sustainability changes to how we practice medicine that become magnified through every nations’ hospitals. His love of nature affects everything he does at work, home, and well, anywhere…

Lindsay Scudder

Lindsay Scudder is a Fellow of Sustainable Healthcare in the Department of Critical Care at the Melbourne Medical School and a Registered Nurse at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

Throughout her nursing career Lindsay has developed a passion for healthcare sustainability which led her to complete the University of Melbourne’s Graduate Certificate in Climate Change and Health in its inaugural year.

With a career in haematology and oncology nursing Lindsay holds qualifications including a Graduate Certificate in Cancer and Palliative Care Nursing and a Masters of Advanced Nursing Practice (Nurse Practitioner). She is the former Chair of the Haematology Society of Australia and New Zealand (HSANZ) Victorian Nurses’ Group.

Lindsay is passionate about providing education on the impacts of climate change on human health and enjoys empowering clinicians to lead and implement sustainable change.

Dr Jess Davies

Dr Jess Davies is an anaesthetist at Austin Health, Honorary Lecturer in the Department of Critical Care and co-founder of the TRA2SH Research Network, empowering others to make real-world changes to reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare.

Jess is starting a PhD to explore how we can implement environmental sustainability into operating theatres, which are one of the highest carbon areas in hospitals. There is already plenty of research about the environmental and financial benefits of reducing, reusing and recycling in operating theatres so she wants to explore how we can actually overcome the barriers to deliver high quality healthcare that doesn’t cost the earth.

Sustainability and Planetary Health Action Network (SPHAN)

We host the MMS Sustainability and Planetary Health Action Network to:

  • Develop and support research, education and engagement in sustainable healthcare and planetary health across MMS and affiliated clinical institutions.
  • Facilitate collaborations across the University, with affiliated clinical institutions, external partners, government and the broader community to develop and promote initiatives.
  • Accelerate practice and policy changes to support sustainable healthcare and planetary health