Moving beyond the front line: a 20-year retrospective cohort study of career trajectories from the Indigenous Health Program at the University of Queensland

This report examines critical success factors for enabling Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership across the health system as demonstrated by alumni of the University of Queensland (UQ) Indigenous Health Program (IHP) (1994–2005) who today work in various leadership roles throughout the country.\ua0It determines the enablers of professional success of these health leaders in various facets of the health system and investigates the impact of active participation in the community of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals over the course of a career. Through this analysis, the report further theorises the confluence of community, subjectivity, self-determination and health

Submission to Productivity Commission Inquiry into an Indigenous Evaluation Strategy

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Living with diabetes: rationale, study design and baseline characteristics for an Australian prospective cohort study

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a major global public health threat. In Australia, as elsewhere, it is responsible for a sizeable portion of the overall burden of disease, and significant costs. The psychological and social impact of diabetes on individuals with the disease can be severe, and if not adequately addressed, can lead to the worsening of the overall disease picture. The Living With Diabetes Study aims to contribute to a holistic understanding of the psychological and social aspects of diabetes mellitus

Philosophically thinking through COVID-19

In their recent article, ‘Who gets the ventilator in the coronavirus pandemic?’, bioethicists Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson note that we may soon be faced with a situation in which the demand for medical resources is greater than what is available. At that point, decisions about who gets what medical resources ought to be just, they argue. The trouble with the article however, is that the two men seem to approach our present crisis as though it were just that, a present tense phenomenon. They view COVID-19 not as a something that has emerged over time as a result of our social configuration and political choices, but as something that appeared out of nowhere, an atemporal phenomenon

Contributing towards health provision in severely disrupted environments - some ethical considerations

Emanating from work on the provision of health services in severely disrupted environments, this paper looks at the cycle of violence and exploitation that appears to have taken root in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The central focus is on the ethical standpoint of Western civil society in relation to individuals in environments like the DRC, where the state may be unable to meet their basic needs. The rights-based approach advocated by Thomas Pogge, Onara O’Neill’s conception of Kantian obligations, and Peter Singer’s consequentialist dichotomy between moral duties and supererogation are interrogated. Finding all three unconvincing, the paper concludes by proposing that civil society in the West engage with individuals in places like the DRC on the basis of Levinasian ethics and Derrida’s conception of gift giving

South-south dialogue: in search of humanity

This paper is a meditation on the idea of South-South dialogue, beginning with the South-South Dialogues: Situated Perspectives in Decolonial Epistemologies symposium held at the University of Queensland in 2015. I interrogate the concept of South-South dialogue, apposing it to the Cartesian ‘I think’, and then question the plausibility of the concept. On the basis of a Gadamerian conception of understanding, I suggest that what passes for South-South dialogue is in fact more likely to be North-South or even North-North dialogue. This is buttressed by an examination of Valentin Mudimbe's Parables and Fables. I go on to suggest, however, that by staying within the realm of the concept, in what could be called a Cartesian paradigm, Mudimbe misses the important role that South-South dialogue can play. Drawing on the work of Sara Motta, Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and the concept of hunhu, I claim that the promise of South-South dialogue is the creation of spaces in which humanity is fostered