Professor          William Jeffcoate

Professor       

Fran Game 

Professor William Jeffcoate was appointed as an endocrinologist in Nottingham in 1979, and subsequently established a specialist foot clinic in 1982 for the care of diabetic foot disease. He resigned from his full-time post in 1997 to focus on studying disease of the foot in diabetes in order to build an evidence-based foundation for the management of diabetic foot complications.

This led to the beginning of the Foot Ulcer Trials Unit in 2002, which he established with Professor Frances Game.

Professor Jeffcoate has designed and completed several large, multicenter and multinational trials and has also undertaken repeated systemic reviews on the topic of infection of foot ulcers. Other major interests have focused on the pathogenesis
of the acute Charcot foot, as well as the role played by neuropathy in the development of arterial calcification.

After spending years on multiple editorial and advisory boards, he is currently the Clinical Lead of the National Diabetes Foot Care Audit of England and Wales (NDFA).

Professor Fran Game has been a consultant Diabetologist at University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust since 2011. She is also the Clinical Director of R&D and the Derby Clinical Trials Support unit.

Her main clinical and research interest is the Diabetic Foot and she has published over 80 papers and book chapters on the subject. She has an active research interest, running several multicentre/multinational trials in this field. She is especially interested in service development, particularly the need to manage diabetic foot disease in a more cost-effective way, closer to home for patients. She is an active teacher both locally, nationally and internationally, being regularly asked to lecture at major diabetes conferences. She has worked with Diabetes UK on their Putting Feet First campaign. She co-chairs the East Midlands Diabetic Foot Network and was appointed the NHS England Co-Clinical Director for Diabetes and Vascular Diseases for the East Midlands in May 2018.

Fran leads the IWGDF Classification and Wound Healing chapters for the upcoming 2023 Guidelines and is Chair-Elect of the Editorial Board for 2027's Guidelines.

Professor Stephen Twigg

Associate Professor Peter Lazzarini

Professor Stephen Twigg, MBBS (Hons-I), PhD (Syd), FRACP, is Head of Department of Endocrinology, and Medical lead of the Diabetes High-Risk Foot Service, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH). He is Kellion Professor of Endocrinology, Stan Clark Chair in Diabetes, in Sydney Medical School and the Charles Perkins Centre, the University of Sydney. As a physician-scientist his research program has been dedicated to preventing, and managing end-organ complications in diabetes, with focus on foot disease, with over 200 research publications in these fields, as well as National and International grants.

Professor Twigg is Hon. Chair of the Australian Diabetes Foot Network of the National Association of Diabetes Centres, and the NDSS DA Foot Forward initiative, plus Committee Chair of Diabetes Feet Australia (DFA), and Australian representative of D-Foot International, having presented at key forums here and overseas, including the IDF World Global Congress. He co-chaired the 2021 Australian evidence-based guidelines for diabetes-related foot disease, and contributed to the DFA Research Agenda 2021 publication.

Associate Professor Pete Lazzarini is a Research Fellow with Queensland University of Technology and Queensland Health in Brisbane, Australia. Pete has an internationally-recognised track record in diabetes-related foot disease research, and amongst other things, holds an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Early Career Fellowship, is Past Chair of Diabetes Feet Australia and Secretary of the International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot Offloading Guideline.

Dr Sarah Aitken

Michaela Watts

Dr Sarah Aitken is an academic vascular and endovascular surgeon at Concord Repatriation General Hospital, and the University of Sydney. She is passionate about improving surgical outcomes, with a focus upon ensuring that patients' concerns and needs remain central to clinical care. Her primary research focus is on the perioperative care of patients with significant peripheral vascular disease, translating population-wide surgical outcomes research into new and innovative models of care. She is chair of the newly formed SHP Perioperative Care of Surgical Patients Clinical Academic Group, co-chair of the Concord Institute of Academic Surgery, and leads several research collaboratives including the Australian and New Zealand Vascular Trials Network. She is strongly involved in surgical education and is a member of the Board of Vascular Training.

Michaela has been a clinical Podiatrist for over 18 years, specialising in the High Risk Foot within a variety of Victoria's Major Metropolitan Hospitals.  She holds, Bachelor of Podiatry Degree from La Trobe University and a Masters Degree of Podiatry from Curtin University.  She is currently the Grade 4 Clinical Lead for Podiatry/High Risk Foot Service at Eastern Health, in conjunction with her role as the Project Officer for the NADC Foot Network National HRFS Standards and Accreditation program.    

Vanessa Nube

Vanessa Nube is the Director of Podiatry for the Sydney Local Health District. She maintains a role as clinical podiatrist working within the Podiatry and High Risk Foot Services (HRFS) within the District.

She has undertaken lead roles in a range of projects relating to  the care of people with diabetes-related foot complications, and contributed as a clinician researcher to the field with original research published as part of her Masters degree and current PhD candidature. She mostly recently completed the Diabetes Debridement Study, a multi-site randomised study funded by the NSW Ministry of Health.

 Vanessa has advocated strongly for improvement in standards and models of care, working with the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation and on the NSW Diabetes Taskforce, documenting and implementing the NSW Health Standards for HRFS. She contributed to the development of the NADC Collaborative Interdisciplinary Diabetes HFRS Accreditation program and participates as an Assessor, and co-authored the adapted Australian guidelines for pressure offloading in management of diabetes-related foot ulcers.