Advancing metabolic health: Nutrition, microbiome & GLP-1 therapies

A/Prof Janet Franklin is a senior dietitian, research and clinical placement coordinator at the Metabolism & Obesity Service, RPA Hospital, Sydney. Janet is a member of the Eating Disorders and Nutrition Research Group. Janet has over 25 years of experience working in weight management and her research areas include obesity, very low-energy diets, eating disorders and Prader-Willi Syndrome.

Brady Schulz is the Managing Director of Healthy Lifestyles Australia, a multi-disciplinary allied health organisation delivering Dietetics, Exercise Physiology, Diabetes Education and Podiatry across more than 140 Queensland centres. With over 18 years experience in private practice, Brady has built and scaled services in many high-need communities, navigating funding models, staffing challenges, compliance and growth which has led to the delivery of 585,000 occasions of service. He is known for his practical, no-nonsense approach to business and clinical leadership. Brady shares the realities of private practice; what works, what doesn’t, and what he wishes he knew from day one.

Dr Matthew Snelson is a Registered Nutritionist, an Advanced Accredited Practising Dietitian and Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the Nutrition & Health Innovation Research Institute (NHIRI) at Edith Cowan University. He leads the Gut Homeostasis in Cardiometabolic Health Laboratory, where his research investigates how diet shapes the gut microbiome, microbial metabolism and intestinal barrier function, and how these in turn contribute to the development of hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease and heart failure.

Dr Brooke Harcourt is an approachable APD and nutrition therapist with over a decade of experience in infant and child nutrition and metabolism conditions. She is nationally and internationally recognised for her medical research into endocrine conditions having completed research fellowships at the UQ Translational Research Institute, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, the Royal Children’s Hospital and Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. Brooke now has a large private practice, Family Dietetics, and a specialised ‘Therapy Kitchen’, where her and the team take a practical approach to attainable nutrition through feeding therapy and food learning programs in a real kitchen therapy environment, and dietetics services at specialist paediatric centres, eating disorder services and the Victorian Department of Corrections and Youth Justice System.