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This online symposium, 'Long COVID: Journeying together through the fog', has been developed by the PACS-Long COVID steering group, convened by Dr Robin Griffiths.

Dr Robin Griffiths

Dr Robin Griffiths is the convenor of the steering group, who developed this Symposium on PACS-Long COVID. He is a specialist in occupational medicine, with qualifications also in public health medicine, and heads an international distance teaching teaching programme in occupational and aviation medicine. He is supervising COVID related research with 2 international PhD students, and has a personal interest in Long COVID, having had one year of post-viral symptoms in the pre-pandemic era. He is an adjunct professor at three US educational centres, and has a private domestic and international consultancy company. He was previously health services planning manager for a Regional Health Authority and Acting Director of the National Health Committee.

Dr Hemakumar Devan

Dr Hemakumar Devan (he/him) is a clinical academic in pain management, working as a Lecturer at the Rehabilitation Teaching and Research Unit, University of Otago and as a Pain Management Physiotherapist at the Wellington Regional Pain Service. With equity and valuing lived experience expertise at the centre, Dr Devan’s research programme aims to foster self-management support to empower people with persistent pain and their whānau (family and significant others). He currently holds a HRC Health Delivery Career Development Award to co-develop a community-led pain support programme for Māori whānau with pain. Strategically, his goal is to address health inequities and improve health outcomes for people with persistent pain and their whānau.

In the past five years, Dr Devan has secured over $1.4M in funding, published over 35 peer-reviewed articles, and delivered 50+ national and international presentations in pain management. He is a steering committee member of the IASP Early Career Leaders Presidential Task Force, council member of the New Zealand Pain Society and the Deputy Director of Pain@Otago research theme. Dr Devan is a passionate science communicator often presenting his work in pain conferences, blogs and in social media (@HemDevan).

Dr Rachelle Martin

Dr Rachelle Martin currently has two roles. She works as a lecturer at the Rehabilitation Teaching and Research Unit, Department of Medicine, University of Otago Wellington, and she also leads clinical research and knowledge translation at the Burwood Academy Trust (BAT) based in Christchurch. Rachelle aims to develop equitable health-optimising policies and programmes, enabling people who experience disability to live well across their lifespan.

She is committed to participatory methods that listen to and enhance the voices of disabled people, ensuring their perspectives influence health-related policy, programme and service delivery decisions, and work in partnership with Māori researchers to ensure kaupapa Māori responsiveness. She often uses realist review, research or evaluation methods to unpack the ‘black box’ of complex health programmes by developing a theoretically based understanding of ‘what works for who, in which contexts, to what extent, and how?’ Rachelle’s clinical background (>20 years) is working as a physiotherapist in hospital and community settings, principally alongside people with neurological impairments.

Dr Mona Jeffreys

Dr Mona Jeffreys is a senior research fellow in epidemiology at the Health Services Research Centre. She trained at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (MSc) and Bristol University (PhD). She then worked at the Centre for Public Health Research at Massey University (Wellington), as Senior Lecturer in Public Health. After another period at Bristol University, as Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology, she returned to Wellington, and is employed at the HSRC, working on projects around access to primary health care.

Professor Nicola Kayes

Nicola Kayes is Professor of Rehabilitation, and Director of the Centre for Person Centred Research at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in New Zealand. With a background in health psychology, Nicola’s specific research expertise draws insights from the intersection between health psychology and rehabilitation – critically exploring how what we know about how people think, feel, behave and respond in the context of injury and illness can inform how we work to optimise rehabilitation outcomes. This includes an interest in health service delivery and the organisational structures, cultures, policies and practices that can make possible or constrain ways of working and, therefore, impact on our ability to deliver outcomes that matter to people. Nicola’s recent research has focused on better understanding aspects of person-centred practice, therapeutic relationship, peer support, self-management, engagement, accessibility, and knowledge mobilisation in rehabilitation.