Global experience shaping rural health advocacy

Medical student Skye Kinder has been named the City of Greater Bendigo’s Young Citizen of the Year for her dedication to rural health promotion. 

At just 22, Ms Kinder has worked with leading researchers and represented Australia in conferences abroad. In 2014, she is continuing to apply her skills to be a powerful advocate for rural health and medicine through her work in student rural health associations. 

Reflecting a long-standing passion for rural and remote health care delivery, Ms Kinder spends much of her time working to raise awareness of the key issues that exist in rural health to encourage change – using social media as a key tool.

“Social media gives me a powerful voice to advocate for rural health issues,” she says. 

People living in the country can be geographically isolated, so social media is a revolutionary tool that provides an equal voice to people in remote and rural areas, free from the normal social parameters set by location.

“The ability to connect with other medical students, doctors and non-medical personnel simultaneously is unparalleled outside of social media. I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with Australian Medical Association representatives, farmers and regional council representatives through social media endeavours,” Ms Kinder says. 

Ms Kinder has had the opportunity to take part in a number of global experiences. In addition to allowing her to learn all she can from leaders in her field, these experiences have broadened her medical knowledge and considerably shaped her career – providing insights into health and health care delivery that she hopes to apply in her future work in rural health workforce promotion.

To date, she has travelled to Japan to complete a medical research internship with David Van Vactor, Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, where she was based with his team at his adjunct institute – the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. 

She travelled to the US to undertake a medical ethics and health policy internship at the University of Pennsylvania under the guidance of a senior adviser to the Obama administration, Professor Jonathan Moreno, who specialises in the intersection of bioethics and national security.

“The highlights of these experiences were definitely the amazing people I was fortunate enough to meet, both in academia as well as in my personal time,” she says. 

“Textbooks can teach you only so much; people can teach you a lot more.”

She continues to learn from people in this way. In 2013 Ms Kinder represented Australia at the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association General Assembly in Santiago, Chile. 

“The discussions were eye-opening to say the least – I realised how ignorant I was of many cultures and many international health issues during my time in Santiago, and it really encouraged me to continue learning about these things and to be more of a global citizen,” she says.

Ms Kinder is set to travel to Tunisia to represent Australia at the same conference in 2014.

Her work doesn’t stop there. Ms Kinder is the President of the Outlook Rural Health Club at the University and is subsequently involved with the National Rural Health Students’ Network and Rural Health Workforce Australia, which she says is “some of the most enjoyable work that I do.”

Ms Kinder has always had an interest in medicine, which she decided to turn into a career when she commenced a Bachelor of Biomedical Science at Monash University.

“While studying Biomedical Science I considered medical research as a pathway many times. To pursue that field I worked as a lab assistant during my third year, and then completed my Honours in laboratory research. In the end, and due to a wide array of factors, I decided that healthcare was a better fit for me, so I applied for the Doctor of Medicine program at Melbourne.”

Being awarded the City of Greater Bendigo’s Young Citizen of the Year is a significant milestone, providing local recognition for Ms Kinder’s outstanding work and contribution to rural health. She is constantly raising awareness of the issues people in rural areas face, using modern resources and the knowledge she has gained from her study and global experiences to champion them.

“I definitely see myself continuing to work in the area of rural health workforce promotion in future,” she says. 

“In what capacity I don’t yet know – but rural health is a huge part of who I am and I’m happy to give it a voice wherever I can.”

www.mdhs.unimelb.edu.au