Thank you to our State Committees, Planning Committees, Special Interest Groups and Bulletin Team!

We can't finish off volunteer week without thinking all of our Committee and special interest group volunteers. These wonderfully generous people give their time and effort to planning advocacy and local CPD events for all of our members.

Each of our committees means on a regular basis to discuss upcoming advocacy campaigns and work towards achieving them, and to plan our CPD events. From venue choices to finding speakers, through to the little details like organising name badges. All of the planning and hard work is done by our wonderful volunteers with the help of our national staff team as needed. Each state committee is led by a dedicated State Chair and their deputy chair counterpart and a team of local committees supporting them in their role.

Our volunteers for 2021 are:

NSW
Chair - Steven Chu
Deputy Chair - Jody Inyoue

QLD
Chair - Jen Turnbull
Deputy Chair - Lizzy Horsfall

VIC
Chair - Desiree Bolado (who is also our volunteer) Employment Officer
Deputy Chair - Aimee Mills

SA
Chair - Sue Tosh
Deputy Chair - Sally Hinora

WA
Chair - Carmen Jones
Deputy Chair - Rhonda Kremmer

TAS
Chair - Michael Charlton-Fitgerald

Along with their hard working committees who join them in their work.

We also have our national webinars and national symposiums and each has it’s own team of people helping in the planning. Our national webinar planning is done by our CPD committee which is headed up by National CPD Chair Jacquie Biggar who has been a dedicated volunteer with DHAA for approximately 10 years. Our national symposiums are organised by symposium committees with a chair and a team of volunteers both local to the symposium itself and afar. Our 2020/ 2021 Melbourne Symposium is headed up by Ron Knevel and Deb Hume-Brown. And our 2022 Symposium planning is already underway with Michelle Kuss taking the reins. None of these events would go ahead without the time and effort that all of our volunteers have put into creating them.

We also have a number of special interest groups who work within their interest areas on advocacy education and planning. Each of the special interest groups have a chair who leads a team of experienced and passionate volunteers who are working together to achieve better oral health for that subset of the population.

Our Special Interest Groups are led be the following wonderful individuals:

Oral Health Promotion and Public Health Committee - Ian Epondulan
Aged Care SIG - Lynda Van Adrighem
Rural and Remote SIG - Lyn Carman

Special Needs and Vulnerable Persons SIG - Margie Steffens OAM

We also need to thank our Bulletin editor - Robyn Russell. Who organises, proofreads (often in a last minute rush) and writes for the Bulletin. Along with a wonderful team of writers who all put their pen to paper to get stories out to our members every quarter.

And last but not least is a very special group of unnamed individuals. These are the caring, compassionate and experienced clinicians that make up our peer support group. Any time a member is dealing with a stressful work related concern one of this team is there as a shoulder to lean on to help them work through the situation. Any and all requests to our peer support group are fully confidential, as is the identity of the team members working hard to bring this service to our members. So we thank you all for being the unsung hero's behind the scenes.

On behalf of the DHAA and all of our members we would like to thank you for all the time and effort you give in working towards better oral health for all and supporting our members to do the same.