NCYSUR Conference Report and Awards

NCYSUR Deputy Director Professor Leanne Hides gave an invited presentation at the RANZCP 2025 Congress held on the Gold Coast from 4-8 May on the QuikFix Good Night Out project. The GNO targets risky and potentially harmful alcohol use in young university students.

Professor Hides escorted a contingent of young NCYSUR researchers to the College on Problems of Drug Dependence in New Orleans in June. Dr Carmen Lim and Mr Jack Chung won NIDA International Program Travel Awards and Mr Chung and Ms Danielle Dawson received Early Career Investigator travel awards; Ms Dawson could not attend due to illness. The CPDD is the leading US meeting for the AOD sector and travel awards are highly competitive. Dr Lim gave an oral presentation on “Clouded conversations: exploring Australia’s vape discourse on Reddit using Generative AI”. Mr Chung presented his poster “Trends in US Adolescent Vaping of Cannabidiol (CBD), Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and Synthetic Cannabinoids: A Nationally Representative Study (2021-2023)”.

Dr Carmen Lim and young researchers from the NHMRC CRE on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame Dr Ara Cho, and PhD students Ms Isabel Meciar, Ms Germaine Lai and Mr Sisay Mengesha travelled to Dublin for the World Conference on Tobacco Control held from 23-25 June. The World Conference on Tobacco Control 2025 (formerly known as the World Conference on Tobacco or Health - WCTOH) is organized by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies. This conference is a leading global event that aims to bring together experts, health professionals, policymakers, and NGOs from over 100 countries to discuss and advance tobacco control initiatives. Dr Lim presented on “Latent class analysis of people who vape e-cigarettes in Australia: An analysis of the 2022-23 National Drug Strategy Household Survey” and work led by her student Yin Mun Teo on “The bidirectional associations between tobacco-related content online and youth e-cigarette use: results from a prospective cohort study, 2019–2021”. Abstracts have been published in Tobacco Induced Diseases.

Associate Professor Janni Leung was an invited keynote speaker at IMiA25 Sydney: International Medicine in Addiction Conference held over 29-31 August. Associate Professor Leung gave a review of the outcomes of legalisation of cannabis in Canada and how this might influence health policy in Australia.

Professor Leanne Hides has been named the 2025 Distinguished Career Award winner by the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy (AACBT). This is the highest honour for research, teaching, and practice in the field. Professor Hides will receive the award and give a talk at the national conference in Fremantle next month.

NCYSUR NHMRC Development Fellow Associate Professor Janni Leung has been jointly named Queensland’s 2025 Young Tall Poppy of the Year by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science for her work on the correlation between substance use and mental health.

Dr Carmen Lim and PhD student Ms Giang Vu presented their latest research on smoking and vaping at SRNT-E, the European chapter of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in Cluj Napoca, Romania, held 10-12 September.

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