Mr Nick Rushworth – BIA Executive Officer

Nick Rushworth has been Executive Officer of Brain Injury Australia since 2008. He was also President of the Brain Injury Association of New South Wales between 2004 and 2008. In 1996, Nick sustained a severe traumatic brain injury as a result of a bicycle accident. Before joining Brain Injury Australia, Nick worked for the Northern Territory Government setting up their new Office of Disability. Formerly a producer with the Nine Television Network’s “Sunday” program and ABC Radio National, Nick’s journalism has won a number of awards, including a Silver World Medal at the 2003 New York Festival, a National Press Club and TV Week Logie Award.

Nick’s current primary focus is facilitating a national “community of practice” in brain injury for the National Disability Insurance Agency, being piloted in Sydney – regular meetings of Local Area Coordinators and Agency planners with senior Agency staff, a Clinical Lead and allied health representation. (This will be followed by Brain Injury Australia’s delivery of a national training package in brain injury for Agency staff and Local Area Coordinators, also to be piloted in Sydney.) The community’s core purpose is to optimise both needs ascertainment and plan fidelity for NDIS participants with a brain injury.

Nick serves as a consumer representative on: the Australian Trauma Quality Improvement Program Steering Committee; the Victorian Neurotrauma Advisory Council; the Neurotrauma Evidence Translation Steering Committee of the National Trauma Research Institute; the Executive of the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Directorate of New South Wales Health; the Victorian Transport Accident Commission/ Monash University Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research Behaviours of Concern Project; the Steering Committee on Guidelines for the Pharmacological Management of Neurobehavioural Symptoms Following Traumatic Brain Injury (and co-chairs, with Malcolm Hopwood Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, its Consumers and Carers Subcommittee); the Lifetime Care and Support Authority of New South Wales’ Behaviour Management Working Party; the Vocational Intervention Program Steering Committee of New South Wales Health; the Expert Advisory Board of the Moving Ahead Centre of Research Excellence in Brain Recovery; the Slow Stream Rehabilitation National Advisory Group; the Monash Epworth Rehabilitation Research Centre Advisory Board; the Disability Advisory Committee of the Australian Electoral Commission; and the Department of Social Services’ Disability Employment Services Consumer Advisory Group and Telstra’s Disability Forum. Nick is also a Director of the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, and is an Ambassador for the National Organisation for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and the Queensland Brain Institute’s concussion research.