When the Health Consumers’ Council (HCC) adopted its new Rules to conform with the updated Incorporations Act 2015, our Board formally became a Management Committee. We refer to them as a Board for consistency with other similar organisations.
2024-2025 Board
Melanie Gates – Chair
Melanie is deeply committed to health system improvement and believes that the consumer voice is critical to this. She joined the HCC Board as she hopes she can support the organisation’s ability to grow in reach and impact, elevating more voices across Western Australia and creating a positive impact on the WA Health system. Melanie is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Diabetes WA enabling her to bring understanding and valuable insights to HCC around leading a non-profit and the complexities of funding, revenue diversification and growth.
She is also motivated by her own life changing lived experiences in health, including a critical near-miss caused by poor processes which revealed numerous flaws within our health care system at various levels. She’s clear that her ability to advocate for herself was critical to avoiding a very different outcome and so is passionate about people being supported to advocate for themselves in healthcare.
Melanie has a deep interest in the role that information technology and data, combined with effective processes can play to improve safety and quality and patient experiences. In her leadership roles within health, she has prioritised the voice of the consumer in range of areas from service re-design through to through to broader advocacy issues.
Ricki Smith – Deputy Chair
Ricki is motivated by the opportunity to make a difference to people’s lives both at an individual and whole of system perspective, as well as by her own lived experience as a health consumer. Through her role as Chief Executive Officer of the Access Care Network Australia she has made it possible for the voices of almost 500,000 people each year to be the voices that influence their aged care support. As the HCC seeks to grow its presence and the voice of the West Australians it serves, Ricki hopes to use her experience and knowledge of system design and advocacy to add significant value to the management committee and consumers of our health system.
Ricki believes HCC plays an important role in supporting people to navigate the complex health system, and brings an understanding of complementary systems such as private health insurance, aged and disability care sectors, the role of the Carer Gateway and her experience in growing an organisation and diversifying its services and its income sources.
Niall Naghten – Secretary
Niall has been a Certified Practicing Marketer of the Australian Marketing Institute since 2018 and has over 15 years’ experience at senior levels in a variety of industries. Originally from Ireland, Niall emigrated to Australia in 2012 and most recently moved into a senior consultancy role after leading the marketing and communications function at Activ Foundation for over four years.
While working at Activ Foundation, Niall helped to establish the crisis response team and eventually served as its Chair during the COVID-19 pandemic. This role saw him completely redirect the organisation’s focus to ensure that the health needs of thousands of individuals with intellectual disability were met.
Niall is passionate about ensuring that every person has equitable access to information that they need to make decisions about their health.
Ian Ludlow – Treasurer
Ian is a Chartered Accountant Fellow. Following eight years employed in public accounting practice, has over 25 years of experience working at senior levels in not-for-profit organisations serving the community in education, youth and adult accommodation, conference centre operations, large scale property management, insurance and risk management, and mental health services. He is currently the Business Manager for two schools in the Swan Christian Education Association.
He is involved in the community including volunteering with the Anglican Church for more than 30 years, with experience ranging from local parish, Central Diocese, National Church, governance, large scale youth work, and including company directorships of large and very large ($100M+ turnover) church entities delivering aged care. In more recent years, volunteering has included with Scouts WA as a leader supporting Cub Scout, Scout, and Venturer Scout sections in his local area.
Tay Alers
Tay was born and raised in regional WA where seeing the reality of towns grappling with population growth and an ageing population was a driving factor in moving him to a career in health and community services policy. He has a deep understanding of the health policy landscape from his role as Health Policy Adviser to Hon Mia Davies MLA, and from his own lived experience.
As a member of the LGBTIQA+ community with experience of discrimination when accessing health services Tay believes there is much still to do to break down stigma and shift the dial for equity and equality in the health services sector. He welcomes the opportunity to use his lived experience to help create a more consumer-supported health system in WA.
Tay is Senior Policy Adviser to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA (CCIWA), where he works with businesses across industries to ensure they can thrive, and to keep WA the best place to live and do business.
Kim Brewster
Kim is passionate about person-centred care, improving healthcare outcomes for all West Australians, and ensuring the consumer’s voice is heard in interactions with healthcare staff and the health system more broadly.
Kim’s background is in Anthropology and Sociology and Human Rights Law. She is an experienced researcher and policy professional, having previously worked in research and evaluation – utilising research skills to develop strategic recommendations to inform policy, marketing campaigns, and decision making at various levels from Ministers through to policy and research teams.
She has worked for a number of not-for-profit organisations over the years and currently works in the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Sector (ACCHS) where she is a strong advocate for the ACCHS holistic Model of Care, preventative models of care, increased access to services (particularly for regional and remote communities), and local care in the community.
On a personal note, Kim has been both a consumer of health care and a carer for a family member, and has seen firsthand how difficult it can be to ensure your voice is heard within a complex and busy health system, and the need for consumers to be empowered to make informed choices.
Sara Miller Dyer
As a Noongar person working in the health sector Sara is particularly passionate about improving the cultural safety of the health system and the experience of care for Aboriginal people, and sees the consumer voice as key to this.
Sara’s broad understanding of the health system, and of the primary health system specifically, as well as the barriers and enablers to health access for Aboriginal people, come from her professional and lived experience, including her roles at the WA Primary Health Alliance over the last decade. She is currently the Senior Adviser, Aboriginal Health there and also has experience working in the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Sector, and in the areas of mental health and community engagement where she has been a strong advocate for Aboriginal people in the design of services, program improvements and access to general practice.
Sara believes that data can only tell us so much, and the stories of the health journey of individuals and their communities are so important to the design of programs and ensuring equity of access, however, in her experience she has seen that these can be difficult to capture. She is interested in improving mechanisms of feedback across the health system to ensure they are culturally appropriate and so that Aboriginal individuals/families/communities will feel confident in using these and trust that their voice is being heard.
Al Muhit
Al Muhit is the Director of Medical Technology at Child and Adolescent Health Service in WA. He grew up in a medical family and became passionate about patient-centred healthcare from a very young age. He has been involved with a number of not-for-profit organisations including Australian Doctors for Africa (ADFA), Osborne Park Rotary, and Bangladesh Australia Association of WA. Al has been instrumental in facilitating medical and imaging equipment donations to various Asian and African countries over the last decade, through these organisations. He wants to see consumers empowered by digital technologies and become active partners in the management of their healthcare.
Kirtida (Tina) Shah
Kirtida Shah is a health professional and has been a dedicated community leader for the last 12 years in Western Australia. Born in Ahmedabad, Kirtida migrated to Perth along with her family in 2005 and has since strived to promote both Gujarati and Indian culture amongst the wider Australian population. Her passions include women empowerment, awareness and education on domestic violence, engagement and promoting Indian culture, tradition and values. Kirtida was also an integral part of helping the community during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading the organisation of chartered flights to India from stranded citizens and family members. Furthermore, she arranged a taskforce in-charge of providing essential groceries for Indian students as well as individuals living in rural area.
Meredith Waters
Meredith lives in Esperance and identifies as a carer for a family member, and an enthusiastic consumer representative for people living in rural and regional Australia. She is a member of a District Health Advisory Council and is a former Board Member of the WA Country Health Service. She also runs a local radio program.
Meredith was a board member with WACHS five years as a consumer representative and has seen firsthand how much more there is to be done in the area of effective consumer representation. She is particularly interested in health in regional and rural Australia.