Meet the GLEPHA Board

Professor Nick Crofts AM

Director, Centre for Law Enforcement and Public Health (CLEPH), Melbourne, Australia

Professor Nick Crofts AM is an epidemiologist and public health practitioner who has been working in the fields of HIV/AIDS, illicit drugs, harm reduction and law enforcement for 30 years. His major epidemiological work has been on the control of HIV and hepatitis C among injecting drug users in Australia and globally, including almost every country in Asia. As a designer and technical director of AusAID’s flagship HIV/AIDS program in Asia, ARHP 2002-2007, he was instrumental in building capacity among SE Asian police forces in relation to HIV, and has worked in many settings forging relationships between police and public health. He founded the Law Enforcement and HIV Network (LEAHN) in 2009, convenes the International Working Group on Policing Marginalised Communities, and is Director of the Law Enforcement and Public Health Conferences.

Nick Crofts was previously at the Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health for 19 years, where he was instrumental in building its Public and International Health arms, and was Deputy Director for five years. He was Director of Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre for three years, and then at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, developing its Law Enforcement and Public Health Program. His most recent appointment was as Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute in Turin. He has been a member of Australia’s National Council on AIDS three times, and has performed multiple consultancies for WHO, UNAIDS, UNODC, AusAID and other bilateral and multilateral agencies.

He edited the first Manual for Reduction of Drug Related Harm in Asia, founded the Asian Harm Reduction Network, and for his work in Asia was awarded the International Rolleston Award in 1998. He is author of over 150 articles, book chapters and editorials in refereed journals. As well as being technical director for AusAID’s regional HIV program, ARHP, he was technical director of AusAID’s Indonesian harm reduction program. He was principal investigator on an AusAID funded research project in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, on the influence of harm reduction on police.

Richard (Dick) Bent

Simon Fraser University, Canada

Richard has been a Senior Research Associate with the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies (ICURS), Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, since 2009. Prior to joining ICURS he served 35 years as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in a variety of diverse roles, and ended his career in the executive ranks of the RCMP.

Richard’s research interests include mental health calls for service, policing complexity, performance management for police organizations, national security, governance, and public policy pertaining to justice and policing issues.

Richard has developed strong ties with CEAMOS at the University of Chile and Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.

Bill Stronach

Bill Stronach spent 18 years as the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Drug Foundation which is one of Australia’s leading non-government organisations concerned with the prevention and reduction of drug related harms. Prior to this position, he was Director of Grassmere Youth Services located on the outskirts of Melbourne, working with juvenile offenders, homeless and sexually abused young people and their families. For twelve years before this he taught in secondary schools in the state of Victoria and the UK.

He was a Founding director and treasurer of Harm Reduction International (formerly the International Harm Reduction Association); a Director of the International Consortium on Alcohol and Harm Reduction and a member of the Victorian Child Death Review Committee. Hel has chaired the Boards of Anex (Association of Needle and Syringe Programs), Harm Reduction Victoria and the City of Melbourne’s Safe City Licensees Accord Monitoring Committee.

He was previously a member of the Victorian Premier’s Drug Prevention Council, the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Prevention Council, the Victorian Government’s Alcohol Strategy Planning Group and the Advisory Committee for the Centre for Harm Reduction at the Burnet Centre, Melbourne, Australia

Bill was Chairman of the Organising Committees for the 3rd (Melbourne), 7th (Hobart) and 15th (Melbourne) International Conferences on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm and LEPH2012 & LEPH2014. He brings extensive conference organising and management experience both within and beyond the public health sector.

He has been a consultant and advisor on many policy matters and projects in Australia and overseas, and contributed chapters to a number of public health, drug prevention or harm reduction publications.

Ian de Terte

Dr de Terte is a senior lecturer in clinical psychology (US equivalent: Associate Professor) based at the Wellington Campus of the School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand.

He is a member of the clinical psychology training programme at Massey University. Dr de Terte’s philosophy is that clinical practice and teaching should be evidence based. As a result he focuses his research on matters that are directly transferable to everyday situations. He is a former detective with the New Zealand Police and is a reservist (major/clinical psychologist) with the New Zealand Defence Force. Broadly his research is focused on the intersection of clinical psychology and high-risk occupations.

Whilst, Dr de Terte’s research is focused on the context of high-risk occupations, he is particularly interested in first responders and military personnel. His actual research interests can be divided into three main themes: (1) the health/mental health of workers in high-risk occupations (posttraumatic stress); (2) prevention strategies or interventions that moderate or protect against the potential consequences of occupational trauma (psychological resilience/coping strategies); and (3) how clinical psychology can contribute to the domain of high-risk occupations.

He has been fortunate to be involved in clinical or research work in some foreign locations such as Thailand, Philippines, Pitcairn Island, and Dubai.  

Inga Heyman

Inga is a Lecturer in Mental Health and Adult Nursing at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland, with research, teaching and clinical interest in the interface between health, policing and vulnerable groups.  Prior to joining higher education she worked in health and police services in the UK and Australia for over 30 years with a focus on substance use in pregnancy, the commercial sex industry, suicide, self-harm, custody healthcare and public protection.

She has worked with the Scottish Government and Police Scotland in relation to policing and mental health responses. She is currently completing her doctoral studies focusing on the interface and pathways between police, those in mental health distress and emergency health services. She is a member of the Scottish Institute of Policing Research (SIPR) network with a particular focus on law enforcement and public health. 

Melissa Jardine

Twitter @majardine

Dr Melissa Jardine, PhD is on the Board of Directors for the Global Law Enforcement & Public Health Association and Gender Advisor & Communications Manager for the Centre for Law Enforcement & Public Health.

Melissa was a Victoria Police officer for 10 years (2001-2011) working at the frontline and in criminal investigations. Melissa has long term interest in the development of policing in Asia and completed her PhD on policing in Vietnam at the UNSW Law School. She is a consultant to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in relation to gender, policing, border control and transnational crimes in ASEAN.

Melissa has written and delivered a range of international police training packages regarding HIV prevention, harm reduction approaches to drug use and sex work, and police-public health leadership. In 2005, she was the recipient of an award from the Victorian Multicultural Commission while working for Victoria Police, and, was selected as an Asia 21 Young Leader by the Asia Society in 2017.

Melissa completed a Master of Asian Studies at Monash University in 2006 with a focus on the relationship between provincial economic growth in China and capital punishment for economic crimes, and studied Counter-terrorism in ASEAN. She completed a Master of Philosophy in the Faculty of Medicine at Melbourne University in 2013 for examining police culture and police responses to the implementation of drug harm reduction programs in Vietnam.  

In 2018-19 Melissa worked as a consultant to the United Nations on Drugs and Crime and UN Women to promote gender equality among law enforcement officers in Thailand, Vietnam, Lao PDR, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Melissa was featured in the Victoria Police ‘Badge and Beyond’ Police Life magazine in Winter 2017 and in a YouTube video by the UNSW Law School in 2019.

Patricia Griffin

Holy Family University, USA

Patricia is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Graduate Criminal Justice Program at Holy Family University (Philadelphia).  She received her doctorate in criminal justice at Temple University.  Pat began her career as a criminal intelligence analyst, followed by an appointment as Special Agent with the United States Office of Organized Crime and Labor Racketeering.  Prior to joining HFU, she held administrative appointments and lecturer positions at Saint Joseph’s University, Boston College, and Cabrini University. 

Patricia’s research has examined resilience in policing.  Using the methodology of Appreciative Inquiry, she has worked with police organizations to identify and strengthen pathways that support overall health and wellness of police and first responders.  Pat’s research has examined opioid use by police officers in the U.S., in particular how the physical and social availability of opioids has contributed to officers’use, as well as studying the impact of opioid use on workplace policy and practice. Most recently, Patricia served as the Senior International Research Consultant with the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in East Africa to study the use of alcohol and other substances by officers in the Kenyan National Police Service.  

Patricia regularly consults with the non-profit organization, Law Enforcement Health Benefits, Inc.  and the First Responders Addiction Treatment Program (FRAT), Livengrin Foundation, Inc. She is a member of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice Advisory Committee.

Auke van Dijk

Agora Police & Security, Dutch Police Service, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Auke van Dijk is advisor to the chief of the Amsterdam police and strategist at the think tank Agora Police & Security. He has an academic background in international relations theory and international political economy. He has been senior advisor at the Committee for Evaluation of Intelligence and Security Services and was a member of the Vision on Policing Committee (Council of Chief Police Commissioners) that delivered a new comprehensive strategy for future policing.

He is cofounder of the Agora Police & Security. The Agora is an experimental space for thinking and debate among practitioners and academics. The central aim is to enhance the organisation’s ability to think; more specifically to make sense of the societal context and its current or future consequences for day-to-day policing, and to question the way ‘things are done’ by and in the organisation. The Agora is an ‘intellectual playing ground’ and a ‘safe haven’ for the development of new ideas and for contradicting current insights and policy.

Recent themes in his work are: the common ground of law enforcement and public health, vulnerable groups, policing a diverse society, and values-based leadership.

Jennifer Wood

Temple University, USA

Jennifer Wood is a Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA. She received her doctorate in criminology at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining Temple, she served as a Fellow at the Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet) at the Australian National University.

Jennifer is a criminologist with expertise in policing and regulation. Her previous work examined the ways in which public and private entities link together and function to produce order and security. Her current work focuses on the public health dimensions of everyday police work. Her research seeks to describe and explain the ways in which officers manage behavioral health-related encounters as well as the contexts of their decision-making. She is also engaged in collaborative projects designed to identify and assess pre-arrest interventions for navigating people toward behavioral health and social services.

Stan Gilmour

Stan Gilmour is a Detective Superintendent and the Head of Public Protection for Thames Valley Police, UK, and a consultant for serious violence with Public Health England.

In his 26 years’ service he has worked across a broad range of operational functions, from neighbourhood policing and counter terrorism through armed response and intelligence management.  Stan has a BA (Hons) in Politics and a MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice and at present is studying to become a Doctor of Philosophy in Criminology at the University of Oxford.  

He is the author of several articles and book chapters on policing, ethics, and intelligence, and is the co-editor of the Handbook of Transnational Organised Crime and the Handbook of Organised Crime and Politics.  Stan has recently completed a Fellowship at the Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath.  Stan has an interest in the use of combined data and the potential for trauma informed practices in policing.