The team behind Media Doctor consists of a group of academics and clinicians from the Newcastle Institute of Public Health, who have an interest in promoting better and more accurate reporting in the area of medical treatments. There is only one funded position which is the part-time (one day per week) position of Research Officer Amanda Wilson. The Media Doctor team consists of:

David Henry

David Henry is professor of clinical pharmacology, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Training in Pharmacology and Rational Drug Use, and course controller of the pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacoeconomics training program at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He works as a consultant physician (general internal medicine) at Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Waratah and a consulting clinical toxicologist to the Newcastle hospitals. His interests include evaluation of drugs, the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry, lay news reporting of new drugs, and availability of drugs in developing countries.

David Newby

David Newby is Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy at the School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Newcastle. Dr Newby took up the position of Director of the Hunter Drug Information Service (HDIS) in Newcastle in 1992 and completed a graduate diploma in pharmacoepidemiology at the University of Newcastle. In 1995 he joined the Discipline of Clinical Pharmacology at the university and completed a PhD investigating public participation in health care decisions. Dr Newby has been an investigator on several research projects, including chief investigator on a Commonwealth-funded project examining consumer drug information, and a National Prescribing Service funded study of the potential negative impacts of computerised prescribing on antibiotic use in the community.

Balakrishnan (Kichu) Nair

Kichu Nair has been Director and Senior Staff Specialist in the Division of Geriatric Medicine at John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle. He holds a conjoint appointment as Professor of Medicine at the University of Newcastle and has a strong research record, has received many grants and has been a member on several successful research teams. Professor Nair holds numerous positions on medical boards, including being the foundation Chair of the Hunter Ageing Research. He has published widely in Australian and international journals and is currently Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal on Ageing.

David Smith

David Smith is a general practitioner who has worked in the Lake Macquarie region of NSW for nearly 20 years. He is the director of the Hunter Urban Division of General Practice's ethics program and is also a conjoint senior lecturer in the Discipline of Ethics and Health Law at the University of Newcastle. Prior to his entry into general practice he spent a decade conducting epidemiological research in Papua New Guinea. He has also had extensive experience practicing psychiatry. His current interests centre on considerations of quality and equity in the provision of health care.

Ben Ewald

Dr Ben Ewald is a General Practitioner in Newcastle NSW and PhD scholar at the University of Newcastle. Research interests have been in the assessment of new technology in primary care, with a study of the economics of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. He is now running a study into the diagnostic accuracy of a blood test measuring B Natriuretic Peptide for heart failure in general practice patients. He teaches in the epidemiology masters program at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Newcastle.

Rosemary Aldrich

A journalist for many years before qualifying as a doctor and subsequently as a public health physician, Rosemary has extensive experience in public health and health service delivery, management, education and research. She is Deputy Chair of the National Health and Medical Research Council's Health Advisory Committee, and a member of the NHMRC Research Committee. Her research interests include bringing evidence, equity and quality into policy and practice decision-making processes. In 2002, she and three colleagues founded the Australasian Collaboration for Health Equity Impact Assessment, currently undertaking an international project developing and testing a framework for equity-focused health impact assessment.

Penny Warner-Smith

Penny Warner-Smith is the Project Manager for the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health, and Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Gender and Health at the University of Newcastle. Also a qualified journalist, she is a health sociologist who has particular interests in gender equity. Her current research activities include an investigation of work-life balance and wellbeing among dual earner couples, and the coordination of a study of women's expectations and experiences of retirement.

Amanda Wilson

Amanda Wilson is a medical writer and researcher . She has a Masters degree in writing and is undertaking a PhD on health reporting in the Australian Media.

Patricia McGettigan

Patricia McGettigan is a former senior lecturer in the Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, and a consultant physician at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Newcastle. She trained at Trinity College Dublin and moved to Australia in 1997 to learn about pharmacoeconomics. Her interests include quality use of medicines, evidence based medicine, and drug evaluation. She recently moved to Hull in the UK but retains an interest in Media doctor and contributes actively to the reviews.

David Williams

Dr David Williams is Director of Neurology and Deputy Chairman of the Division of Medicine at John Hunter Hospital. He is also a Conjoint Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Health at the University of Newcastle, responsible for Neurology teaching. He is a member of the National Examiners' Board of the Royal Australian College of Physicians and a member of the NSW Ombudsman's Advisory Committee on Reviewable Disability and Deaths. His doctoral research was in the genetic epidemiology of motor neuron disease, and his interests include the genetics and epidemiology of neurodegenerative disorders (particularly motor neuron disease, multiple sclerosis and Huntingtons disease), cognition and consciousness, and medical education.

Julia Lowe

Julia Lowe is a general internal medicine specialist endocrinologist and diabetes physician. She is director of diabetes services in the Hunter New England Health Service (New South Wales) and has trained in public health and epidemiology. Like other members of the Media doctor team in Newcastle NSW she has a strong interest in how the lay media convey important messages about new treatments.

Billie Bonevski

After completing her PhD with the Discipline of Behavioural Science in Medicine at the University of Newcastle, Billie worked with the Cancer Council NSW in the areas of cancer control and prevention and improving the psychosocial care of people with cancer. In 1998 she joined the Newcastle Institute of Public Health as a Senior Researcher concerned primarily with research into ways of improving the quality of health services. Her main research interests include quality and equity in health and public health education. Joining the Media Doctor team in 2007, Billie will play a role in driving research within the project, in particular the investigation of a feedback program.

Pauline Chiarelli

Associate Professor Pauline Chiarelli is Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Physiotherapy at University of Newcastle, having made a major contribution to the development of the successful undergraduate Bachelor of Physiotherapy Program. After almost 30 years in clinical practice Pauline returned to study to gain a Research Master's Degree in Medical Science in Health Promotion , followed by a PhD. Pauline has diverse professional interests but the focus of her research has been continence promotion. She has taught both nationally and internationally, is well published in the scientific literature and is a member of the editorial Boards of the Australian Journal of Physiotherapy and the Australian and New Zealand Continence Journals. An inaugural Board member of the Continence Foundation of Australia, Pauline has advised the Federal Government as a member of National Continence management Strategy since its inception in 1988 and she is a theme leader within the Centre for Research in Gender Health and Aging at the University of Newcastle