Vanessa Lee-AhMat

<p>Dr. Lee began her public health and education career over 24 years ago as a teacher, Clean Beach co-ordinator, Come Try Sports co-ordinator, and Tournaments of the Minds co-ordinator. In 2005, for the social impact that Vanessa made on the Torres Strait community she received an Australian Government award for being an Outstanding Citizen. From the Torres Strait Dr. Lee moved back to Brisbane for further study and in 2006 she completed her Master of Public Health (MPH) at University of Queensland majoring in Indigenous Health focusing on nutrition epidemiology, thesis by research. This research led to Vanessa and her team finding that 2.5% of women in Bangladesh were sub-clinical vitamin A deficient, a finding that warranted an intervention to provide food and nutrition programs across Bangladesh. <br><br> After obtaining a work study scholarship in 2007 to enrol in a PhD at Griffith University; Dr. Lee focused on Aboriginal communities and services having autonomy of their health. She graduated as the first Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander Doctor of Philosophy, in the discipline of Medicine, in 2016. In 2011, Vanessa relocated to Sydney where she began a position at the University of Sydney becoming academically instrumental in creating change for Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander people at the University level, State and National levels of Government. Parallel to her position Vanessa was the first Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander Office Bearer for the National Public Health Association of Australia, holding the position of Vice President (VP) Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander health from 2011 to 2015. <br><br> In this Indigenous leadership role as Vice President Dr. Lee Drew on her PhD research to augment the fight for Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander self-determination and human rights through senate submissions to address public policy for Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander preventative health. From identifying the need to increase the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander public health workforce to close the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, Vanessa led the development and implementation of Indigenous core competencies into Australian Public Health Curriculum (2005 to 2019) as the deputy chair, and later chair of the Public Health Indigenous Leadership in Education Network. Moreover, Dr. Lee translated the need to address Indigenous social determinants into the wider public health curricula as a member of the executive board of the Council of Academic Public Health Institutions Australasia. She contributed to the first edition of the National Indigenous Public Health Curriculum Framework (the why). Vanessa led the evaluation of how Schools of Public Health within Australia implemented the Public Health Indigenous core competencies resulting in numerous papers and a second edition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Public Health Curriculum Framework (the how). <br><br> Realising, from her research, that racism was a contributor to young Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander people taking their lives, Dr. Lee accepted an invitation to be an Independent Director for Suicide Prevention Australia, in 2017. In this role Vanessa contributed to the National Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention strategy and National Guidelines to improve coordination of treatment and supports for people with severe and complex mental illness (under embargo). At this time Dr. Lee joined several other Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander academics to form Maiam nayri Wingara Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Sovereignty Collective, as part of a larger global research and policy movement. The focus of this collective is to develop Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander data sovereignty principles, to identify strategic data sets, and to advocate for rights (informed by UNDR.IP) to use data to inform developments. Following her social justice advocacy Dr. Lee became the first Aboriginal-Torres Strait Islander co-chair of the International Lesbian and Gay Association for the Oceania, leading 22 countries in Oceania Pacific towards maintaining Human Rights of the LGBTQI+ people. Over the years Vanessa has written poetry as a means of processing the racism and discrimination experienced in her life coupled with resilience and in 2020, Vanessa published her poetry “Cockatoos in the Mangroves”.</p>