Sharman Stone with the Sue Miers Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Sharmon Stone has been announced as the 2025 recipient of the prestigious Sue Miers Lifetime Achievement Award.
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The award recognises her pioneering and sustained contributions to awareness, prevention and support for those impacted by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Dr Stone’s unwavering commitment to social justice and public health spans more than four decades.
“Amongst many other achievements, she established a group for parliamentarians to garner bipartisan support for the prevention of FASD,” FASD Hub Australia chair Elizabeth Elliott said.
“She initiated Australia’s first national government Inquiry into FASD, advocated for clinical services in Shepparton, and fought hard for a national awareness campaign on alcohol harms in pregnancy, which recently came to fruition.”
Sue Miers, the founder of NOFASD Australia, proudly presented the award.
Dr Stone’s leadership included introducing a private member’s motion on FASD in 2011, which gained bipartisan support.
She also chaired the House of Representatives Indigenous Affairs Committee, where she led an inquiry into alcohol’s impact on Indigenous communities, with a focus on FASD.
Additionally, she established and co-chaired the bipartisan group Parliamentarians for the Prevention of FASD, which facilitated direct engagement between policymakers and experts, families and researchers.
Dr Stone’s advocacy culminated in her landmark 2012 report, FASD: The Hidden Harm: Inquiry into the prevention, diagnosis and management of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.
Shaman Stone (holding the award) was congratulated by past recipients of the Sue Miers Lifetime Achievement Award: Carol Bower, Sue Miers and Elizabeth Elliott.
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She said she was honoured to receive the Sue Miers Lifetime Achievement Award.
“While speaking to my acceptance presentation, I recalled how the Federal Government had come to agree to FASD research and some family support,” she said.
“But there were long delays in enforcing labels to warn about alcohol consumption and pregnancy, and the funding of communication awareness programs, since those early times so much has been achieved.
“Not only has NOFASD’s support for families been so critical, combined with the FASD Hub the research and community communication is now occurring.
“So many have done so much.
“I am humbled to have been added to the recognition award.”
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