Thursday, 11 June 2026 - Event Agenda

Thursday, 11 June 2026 - Event Agenda
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9:00 am - 9:10 am Chair’s Opening Remarks

Jacqui Lewis - Co-founder, BN Healthy, Australia Weight Loss Surgery Podcast
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Jacqui Lewis

Co-founder, BN Healthy
Australia Weight Loss Surgery Podcast
See Bio

8:10 am - 8:50 am Keynote Panel | Translating Urgency into Action: Australia's National Response to Obesity and Metabolic Disease

This session explores how Australia can transform obesity's designation as a national health priority into concrete outcomes through strategic policy reform, sustainable funding models, and coordinated leadership across healthcare, government, and community sectors.

Key Takeaways:
• Understanding the gaps between policy recognition and implementation, and identifying the governance structures needed to drive coordinated national action on obesity prevention and treatment.
• Examining successful international frameworks for sustainable investment in obesity care, and how multi-sector collaboration can align stakeholders toward unified, measurable health outcomes.

9:50 am - 10:30 am Policy Leadership Panel | Surgical Innovation & Access: Scaling Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery to Meet Growing Demand

Addresses the challenge of expanding bariatric surgery capacity amid workforce shortages and surging demand, exploring innovative surgical approaches, training pathways, and system redesign to maintain safety standards while improving equitable access.

Key Takeaways:
• Strategies for training more bariatric surgeons, implementing enhanced recovery protocols, and adopting technological innovations that increase surgical throughput without compromising patient safety or outcomes.
• Examining barriers to bariatric surgery for underserved populations, including geographic disparities, funding limitations, and referral pathway inequities, with solutions for creating more inclusive and accessible surgical programs nationwide

10:30 am - 10:50 am Speed Networking - Connect with Your Peers

Fast, focused, and energising — speed networking is your chance to meet fellow attendees, exchange ideas, and spark new collaborations with your metabolic healthcare professionals

10:50 am - 11:20 am Clinical Innovation | The New Therapeutic Frontier: Pharmacological Breakthroughs Redefining Obesity Care

This session examines how breakthrough GLP-1 receptor agonists and novel combination therapies are transforming obesity treatment paradigms, elevating patient outcomes, reshaping clinical expectations, and establishing obesity as a medically manageable chronic disease requiring long-term pharmaceutical intervention.

Key Takeaways:
• Understanding how advanced GLP-1s and dual/triple agonists achieve superior weight loss and metabolic improvements, including their effects on appetite regulation, insulin sensitivity, and cardiovascular benefits beyond traditional interventions.
• Navigating prescribing guidelines, managing patient expectations for long-term therapy, addressing access and affordability challenges, and integrating pharmacotherapy with lifestyle interventions for optimal sustainable outcomes.

11:20 am - 11:50 am Morning Break

Fuel up, connect, and explore - your chance to grab a coffee, meet solution partners, and spark new conversations across Australia’s obesity care community

interactive Discussion Groups

IDG A

11:50 am - 1:20 pm The New Therapeutic Frontier: Scaling Access to Breakthrough Obesity Medications

IDG B

11:50 am - 1:20 pm Connected Care Continuum: Designing Truly Seamless Patient Journeys

IDG C

11:50 am - 1:20 pm AI in Clinical Decision-Making: Trust, Transparency, and Clinical Value

IDG D

11:50 am - 1:20 pm Reimagining the Patient Experience: Engagement That Lasts

1:20 pm - 2:20 pm Networking Lunch and VIP Hosted Lunch

Refuel, reconnect, and recharge — take this opportunity to meet peers from across Australia’s health, research, and policy community, exchange ideas, and spark fresh conversations shaping the future of obesity and metabolic health.

2:20 pm - 2:50 pm Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease: A Clinical Consensus Statement from the National Heart Foundation of Australia

This session unpacks the National Heart Foundation of Australia’s clinical consensus on the link between obesity and cardiovascular disease. It highlights what the guidance means for prevention, risk assessment, and patient management in real-world settings.

Key Takeaways:

• Obesity should be managed as a key cardiovascular risk factor, not just a lifestyle issue.

• The consensus provides clear, evidence-based direction to support earlier and more consistent clinical intervention.


2:50 pm - 3:20 pm Cardiometabolic Syndrome of Menopause: The Health Shift No One Warns You About
Dr Lucy Burns - Lifestyle Medicine Specialis, Real Life Medicine

Menopause brings more than visible symptoms. It triggers deep hormonal shifts that affect metabolism, heart health, and long-term disease risk. Changes in oestrogen, insulin sensitivity, and cortisol levels interact to increase the risk of weight gain, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and inflammation. Understanding these changes early allows women to take practical steps to protect their health through targeted lifestyle and clinical strategies.

Key Takeaways:

• Oestrogen decline directly impacts fat distribution, cholesterol, and insulin sensitivity.

• Insulin resistance often increases during menopause, raising diabetes risk.

• Cortisol dysregulation can worsen stress, sleep, and central weight gain.

• Early, hormone-aware lifestyle and medical strategies can significantly reduce long-term cardiometabolic risk.


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Dr Lucy Burns

Lifestyle Medicine Specialis
Real Life Medicine
See Bio

3:20 pm - 3:50 pm Women's Health and Obesity | Managing Weight Across the Reproductive Lifespan
Inoka Perera - Fertility and Prenatal Dietitian, Western Sydney local Health District

This session Provides clinical insights into the complex management of obesity throughout reproductive stages, examining evidence-based approaches for weight optimisation during preconception, fertility treatments, pregnancy, and postpartum periods while balancing maternal-fetal health outcomes.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding how obesity affects fertility, ovulation, pregnancy complications, and metabolic health, plus strategies for safe preconception weight management and timing interventions to improve conception rates and pregnancy outcomes.

• Navigating appropriate gestational weight gain targets, managing obesity-related pregnancy complications, addressing postpartum weight retention, and safely integrating pharmacological or surgical interventions across different reproductive stages without compromising maternal or infant health.


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Inoka Perera

Fertility and Prenatal Dietitian
Western Sydney local Health District
See Bio

2:20 pm - 2:50 pm Digital Therapeutics at Scale | Translating Behavioural Innovation into Measurable Clinical Outcomes

Explore how evidence-based digital health platforms can deliver scalable behavioral interventions for obesity management, examining the practical challenges of clinical integration, reimbursement models, patient engagement sustainability, and measuring real-world effectiveness beyond controlled trials.

Key Takeaways:
• Understanding what constitutes clinically meaningful outcomes from digital therapeutics, including weight loss sustainability, metabolic marker improvements, and behavioral adherence metrics that meet regulatory and payer requirements for widespread adoption.
• Addressing barriers to implementing digital programs within existing clinical workflows, including prescribing pathways, data interoperability with electronic health records, clinician training needs, patient access equity, and creating sustainable funding models beyond pilot programs.

2:50 pm - 3:20 pm AI in Clinical Decision-Making | Empowering Clinicians with Real-Time Precision and Insights

Examine the integration of artificial intelligence tools into obesity and metabolic care, addressing clinical validation requirements, algorithmic transparency, workflow implementation, ethical considerations, and strategies for ensuring AI enhances rather than replaces clinical judgment.

Key Takeaways
• Establishing evidence standards for AI diagnostic and predictive tools in metabolic care, understanding algorithm development and bias detection, and creating frameworks for clinicians to critically evaluate AI recommendations while maintaining clinical autonomy.
• Navigating the implementation of AI-assisted decision support into clinical workflows, addressing liability concerns, ensuring data privacy, training clinicians on appropriate AI utilisation, and monitoring real-world performance to prevent over-reliance or misapplication

3:20 pm - 3:50 pm Data-Driven Prevention | Leveraging Predictive Analytics for Early Risk Identification

Explore how predictive analytics and machine learning models identify individuals at high risk for obesity and metabolic disease before clinical manifestation, enabling proactive, targeted interventions that shift healthcare from reactive treatment to preventive population health management.

Key Takeaways:
• Understanding how data science techniques analyse genetic, behavioral, environmental, and clinical factors to forecast obesity risk trajectories, enabling earlier identification of vulnerable populations and personalized prevention strategies before disease progression occurs.
• Translating predictive insights into actionable clinical and public health interventions, addressing implementation challenges including data infrastructure requirements, privacy considerations, resource allocation decisions, and measuring the cost-effectiveness of early intervention versus traditional treatment approaches.

3:50 pm - 4:10 pm Innovation Showcase: Demo Drive for the Future of Obesity Care

Engage with technology demos, explore transformative products, and discover how these innovations can enhance patient care and streamline healthcare delivery across ANZ

4:10 pm - 4:40 pm Afternoon Break

Fuel up, connect, and explore — your chance to grab a coffee, meet peers across Australia’s health and policy community, and spark new conversations shaping the future of metabolic health.

4:40 pm - 5:10 pm Multidisciplinary Care Panel | Personalised Nutrition and Behavioural Support in Obesity Care | The Essential Role of Nutritionists and Psychologists

Marjan Mazaheri - Psychologist, MedSurg Weight Loss
Dr Louise Brightman - Staff Specialist (Psychiatrist) - Department of Bariatric Medicine, Canberra Health Services
Inoka Perera - Fertility and Prenatal Dietitian, Western Sydney local Health District

How nutritionists and psychologists collaborate to develop individualised treatment strategies, integrating tailored dietary approaches based on metabolic profiles with psychological interventions addressing behavioural patterns, emotional eating, and sustainable lifestyle change.

Key Takeaways:
• Understanding how individual variations in insulin sensitivity, gut microbiome, nutrient metabolism, and genetic factors combine with psychological assessments of eating behaviours, stress responses, motivation, and mental health to create truly personalised nutrition and behavioural intervention plans.
• Examining collaborative frameworks where nutritionists and psychologists work synergistically throughout the obesity care continuum, addressing both physiological and psychological barriers to weight management while tackling workforce capacity, referral pathways, and reimbursement structures for comprehensive care.

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Marjan Mazaheri

Psychologist
MedSurg Weight Loss
See Bio
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Dr Louise Brightman

Staff Specialist (Psychiatrist) - Department of Bariatric Medicine
Canberra Health Services
See Bio
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Inoka Perera

Fertility and Prenatal Dietitian
Western Sydney local Health District
See Bio

5:15 pm - 6:15 pm Networking Reception

Join fellow delegates for a relaxed close to the day — connect with peers from across Australia’s health, research, and policy community, reflect on key takeaways, and continue the conversations shaping the future of obesity and metabolic health.

In Partnership With:

Healthcare

QUESTIONS?

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