Dr Briony Dow is President of the Australian Association of Gerontology (AAG), Director of Health Promotion at the National Ageing Research Institute (NARI), and Honorary Clinical Associate Professor, University of Melbourne. Briony has over 15 years' experience as a social worker in community care and rehabilitation and 10 years as a researcher in gerontology. She has worked with older people from a range of culturally diverse backgrounds both as a clinician and researcher. Her first social work role was in the Southern suburbs of Melbourne where most of her clients were refugees from Eastern Europe, coming to Australia after the Second World War. They shared the challenges of growing older in a foreign land, such as the different expectations their children and grandchildren had about family relationships and care, the shame of having to rely on government subsidised services and the pain of losing their friends and relatives who had shared their war time experiences. More recently she has conducted research with older people who have more recently migrated to Australia from countries such as Vietnam and China as part of the family reunion program. These more recent migrants share similar concerns about the changing nature of intergenerational relationships, the importance of connections with others who share their experiences and the challenges of accessing a health and community care system that is foreign to them. Briony is particularly interested in family and care relationships. She was a Carers Victoria Board member from 2008 to 2013 and her PhD and much of her subsequent research has been about carers. She is also interested in health policy and reform and has worked closely with the Department of Health Victoria for the past 10 years on improving health care for older people. She has over 30 peer reviewed publications and as many government reports. Briony oversees research projects in a range of areas as Director of the Health Promotion Division and is keen to see that all groups in society have access and are included in research projects.

 Gerontology, ageing, stress, sleep medicine, apnea, insomnia