I am passionate about working in, and making a difference to health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. I am aware that the health disparities faced by Indigenous peoples are broad and complex. Health literacy and opportunities to access resources supportive of living a healthy lifestyle can build a positive health culture among Indigenous people and communities.   But many ‘top-down’ policies and programs have had limited success in closing the gap in terms of morbidity and mortality as these approaches have failed to account for the heterogeneity of Indigenous communities, the critical role of employing cooperative and empowering approaches, and the uniquely Aboriginal conceptualisations of health, in which the individual is inextricably tied with the health of the whole Community.

Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations have been an important development in this area, and I have had the privilege of working in these during my clinical placements – the Gathering Place, in Werribee, Victoria, and (later this year), at the Biripi Aboriginal Corporation Medical Centre in Taree – the land of my ancestors. These experiences have confirmed for me the importance of cultural identity and self-determination in forming our own (Aboriginal) solutions to health problems. But it still brings home strongly the incredible disadvantages and struggles that Aboriginal people face across many dimensions of health, and which they face with so much unquestioning strength. Therefore, we also need to pay attention to addressing the reasons for, and seeking to rectify the disproportionate distribution of poor social determinants of health in Aboriginal communities, importantly by making greater efforts as a social and global community to take Reconciliation seriously and to offer our sincere efforts at understanding the tragic cultural loss that instigated an inter-generational pattern of disadvantage and suffering.

Given the complexity of the problem that I am passionate about addressing, I understand that there is only a little that I can do as a medical practitioner. However, even this little is important to me. I want to work in a variety of Aboriginal communities – from metropolitan to rural and remote – learning from the people and providing whatever medical care I can. I wish to listen to and assess the needs and barriers to Aboriginal health and integrate these into the ongoing research that I am undertaking (with ethical approval and supervision) so that I can advocate for effective program design and delivery through my research and through representation to political leaders and stakeholders. I wish also to address the continued ignorance, apathy, and even racism, that is often entrenched in the attitudes of the general public by evaluating systems of delivering effective education into culturally appropriate practice for non-Indigenous health workers, and respect for the cultural expertise of their Indigenous colleagues (themes of my current MD research project based in the Hunter New England Health District). I would also greatly value the opportunity to draw on my educational experience to build the capacity of young Indigenous students to learn about healthy living and to consider training in medicine, whilst drawing on the rich tradition of Aboriginal medicine.