TALK: Friends of the UWA Library Speaker

About the Speaker

Susan Prescott is Winthrop Professor at The University of Western Australia and a practising paediatrician at the Children’s Hospital in Perth, where she specialises in treating children with asthma and allergic diseases. Her research in this field is internationally recognised, and she is author of ‘The Allergy Epidemic: a Mystery of Modern Life’ and ‘The Calling’ in addition to more than 200 scientific publications. She is a Director of the World Allergy Organisation and has received many awards and fellowships including a Winston Churchill Fellowship. She also founded and leads the multidisciplinary ‘DOHaD Consortium’ (Developmental Origins of Health and Disease) in Western Australia which focuses on the importance of early life in preventing many chronic diseases later in life. Her inspiration to study medicine came from her grandmother, one of the few women to study medicine in the 1930s, and her love of research and academia was inspired by her grandfather Sir Stanley Prescott, former Vice-Chancellor of The University of Western Australia.

Presentation Synopsis

Susan's talk will explore the reasons for the global pandemic of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) as a major threat to human development. It will examine the common risk factors for the rising burden of these diseases (ranging from asthma and allergic disease, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, mental ill health and some cancers), and how the ultimate solutions may lie in very early life. It will also include a more personal family connection with health in the WA community, with the story of her grand parents Sir Stanley Prescott and Lady (Dr) Monica Prescott who were medical missionaries in China under Japanese occupation in WWII, before they came to Perth to establish our first Medical School.