Investing in Indigenous health leadership

Volume 10 Number 7 July 14 - August 10 2014

Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty with immunologist Dr Misty Jenkins Photo: Simon O’Dwyer/Fairfax Syndication.
Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty with immunologist Dr Misty Jenkins Photo: Simon O’Dwyer/Fairfax Syndication.

 

Future Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals will have the opportunity for leadership development in health policy and practice thanks to a $10 million gift from leading Australian philanthropist, Greg Poche. By Elizabeth Brumby.

Despite advances in healthcare in recent years, Indigenous Australians have a shorter life expectancy, higher mortality rates and higher rates of preventable illness such as heart disease, kidney disease and diabetes than other Australians. 

For Indigenous Australians born between 2005 and 2007, life expectancy is estimated to be 67.2 years for males and 72.9 years for females: around 10 – 11 years less than non-Indigenous people. 

A $10 million gift to the University of Melbourne from leading Australian philanthropist Greg Poche will establish the University of Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health: a Centre that will provide training and development programs for emerging and established Indigenous leaders, and create academic pathways for Indigenous PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows in health. The gift is part of Believe – the Campaign for the University of Melbourne. 

Mr Poche, who has donated more than $115 million to causes around Australia, including over $40 million towards improving health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, is the founder and former owner of Star Track Express.

Mr Poche and his wife Kay are committed to doing their best for Indigenous Australians.

“Improving the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Australians is one of our nation’s biggest challenges and it is vital that we do everything we can,” Mr Poche says.

The University of Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health joins ‘sister’ Poche centres at the University of Western Australia, Flinders University and the University of Sydney. The goal of Poche centres around Australia is to contribute significantly to improved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and to reduce disparities in health outcomes between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

Associate Professor Shaun Ewen is the Associate Dean (Indigenous Development) at the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Professor Ewen says the gift is an investment in the future health of our nation, and will play a critical role in reducing health inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. 

“We know that well-managed Indigenous community-based organisations have delivered positive health outcomes for Indigenous people,” Professor Ewen says.

“We also know that some community-based organisations have not always been robustly managed, with a lack of leadership and governance at the core of this. We know, too, that over the past several years, around a dozen senior university leadership positions in Indigenous health across the country have been left unfilled – or filled by non-Indigenous academics.

“To make real, long-term gains in Indigenous health, we need leadership from highly skilled, well-qualified Indigenous people who are able to mobilise action and build an agenda for change in their areas of health practice.”

The Centre’s training programs will have separate tracks for emerging and senior leadership. Themes of the emerging leadership program will include exposure to a breadth of career options, including clinical, public health and policy and research, and will provide emerging Indigenous health professionals with a platform to accelerate their influence and development. 

The senior leadership program will draw participants from existing national leaders in Indigenous health, and will give leaders the opportunity to enhance their skills, develop their networks, and become key influencers across government, non-profit and research organisations.

“The mission of the University of Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health is to develop the next generation of Indigenous leaders. These leaders will influence the strategic directions of institutions, be mentors for emerging Indigenous leaders, build enduring partnerships and influence the health outcomes of Australia so that the gap in health status between Indigenous and other Australians is closed,” Professor Ewen says. 

Dr Misty Jenkins was the the first Indigenous Australian to attend an Oxbridge university, and is a postdoctoral fellow in the Cancer Cell Death laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. She has been mentored by Nobel-prize winning immunologist Professor Peter Doherty and ARC Future Fellow Professor Stephen Turner, and in 2013 was awarded a L'Oreal Australia and New Zealand For Women in Science Fellowship. 

After completing her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne in 2007, and postdoctoral research in the UK, she worked with an Indigenous education body, the Aurora Project, to establish scholarships for other Indigenous postgraduates to attend these universities.

In order to help grow emerging Indigenous leaders in health, the University of Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health will provide opportunities for young Indigenous people to access and succeed in education. The Centre, together with the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, will work towards achieving 20 new Indigenous PhD enrolments in health by 2020. To further build on this vision, a number of Poche Postdoctoral Fellows will be developed and supported – enabling early career Indigenous academics to become established, occupy positions of leadership and attract external grant funding.

Reflecting on her PhD at the University of Melbourne, Dr Jenkins describes the experience as, above all else, “empowering”.

“My mother – a Gunditjmara woman from Western Victoria – always impressed on me the value of education in expanding one’s horizons,” Dr Jenkins says.

“My PhD gave me the foundation for everything I’ve achieved since, and solidified in me that I wanted to be a scientist and researcher when I ‘grew up’. I learned not just to seize opportunities as they passed by, but also to create opportunities of my own.

“I was incredibly well supported throughout the experience and it was really that support – personal and academic – that has enabled me to grow so much professionally.”

Dr Jenkins says she hopes the University of Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health will build on this culture of support for Indigenous PhD candidates, providing more opportunities for young people to accelerate their influence, growth and development as leaders in their field, whether it be clinical, policy or research-based. She says providing an opportunity for young Indigenous people to connect with national leaders and influencers in health is critical.

“What I learned during my PhD, and have learned over and over again since, is how important it is as a young person starting out to have access to mentors and leadership figures to look up to.

“I have a handful of very good mentors in my life, who work both within and outside the science field. Being able to access a network of leading figures in your field is really the pathway to becoming a better person and to becoming a leader yourself.”

 

www.newsroom.melbourne.edu/news/philanthropist-funds-indigenous-health-leadership