Each year BreastScreen WA hosts a Pink Ribbon Breakfast to celebrate achievements and acknowledge their supporters. The sit-down breakfast event will host special guest speakers who are women who have achieved wonderful things throughout their career. This year’s guest speakers are the 2023 WA Senior Australian of the Year, Theresa Kwok and 2023 WA Australian of the Year, Professor Samar Aoun.

Join BreastScreen WA for the 2023 Pink Ribbon Breakfast on Monday 23 October at as we reflect and celebrate the past year at Fraser’s Restaurant. Purchase your tickets here (external site).

Guest Speakers

Theresa Kwok

2023 WA Senior Australian of the Year

With a background in social work, Theresa Kwok has been helping migrants settle in Australia from the moment she arrived from Hong Kong 35 years ago. Theresa has supported older migrants from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities at Perth’s Chung Wah Community and Aged Care group. Theresa is now the CEO of this organisation and delivers a range of community care programs for around 800 clients, their families and communities. Theresa helps elderly members of CALD communities to live independently and has created more equitable access to culturally appropriate migrant and aged-care services. Recognised with multiple awards for her efforts, Theresa is reshaping how aged and community care services are delivered to meet changing demands and raising awareness of the unique challenges and strengths of CALD older people across various sectors.

Professor Samar Aoun

2023 WA Australian of the Year

Professor Samar Aoun is Perron Institute Research Chair in Palliative Care at The University of Western Australia. She is an inspirational champion for improved palliative care and greatly respected for her leadership and advocacy for a public health approach to palliative care and grief support, with greater community involvement. She is known as an innovator and a champion of practice and policy translation. Professor Aoun’s research contribution has earned her international recognition, helping to improve understanding of palliative care and bereavement care and the opportunities for improvement through the compassionate communities model of care, with closer integration of clinical and community care aspects. Her particular focus on improving the end-of-life journey for under-served groups such as people with motor neurone disease (MND) and dementia, terminally ill people who live alone, and family carers before and after bereavement, is one of the many ways she is making a difference. For palliative care to be accessible to everyone and everywhere, Prof Aoun’s vision is to make sure that every person, every family and every community knows what to do when someone is caring, dying or grieving. For this, she advocates for improving death literacy and grief literacy and for normalising having such conversations. Death, dying, grief and loss are everyone’s business and everyone’s responsibility in the community. In a voluntary capacity, Professor Aoun is co-founder and chair of the South West Compassionate Communities Network in Western Australia, President of MND Australia, President of the MND Association of WA, and a board member of Palliative Care WA. At the international level, she is a member of Public Health Palliative Care International, and the European Association for Palliative Care reference group on public health palliative care.

Among numerous awards, Professor Aoun received the Medal for Excellence from the European Society for Person Centred Healthcare in 2018, the Centenary Medal in 2003 from Australia’s Prime Minister and more recently 2023 WA Australian of the Year.