“As my guide and mentor in my ophthalmic career, Professor Fred Hollows AC involved me immediately in the many challenges confronting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ people. Our Department of Ophthalmology at the University of New South Wales, located at the Prince of Wales Hospital, actively contributed to the establishment of the first Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern in the 1970s. Besides spreading to other parts of Australia, rapidly this provision of services expanded to provide regular eye clinics in Bourke and Brewarrina as well as Broken Hill, both in the regional hospitals and in the communities.
In 1974 Fred ran the ground-breaking National Trachoma and Eye Health program (NT & EHP), which visited every Aboriginal community in Australia, meeting some groups who had had no prior contact with Caucasians. That survey yielded data that spurred Fred and many others, notably Professor Hugh Taylor AC to publicise the woeful standards of healthcare across the spectrum (not simply eye care), particularly in remote and regional areas.
While the NT & EHP itself instituted many treatment programs, it was the beginning of the evolution and implementation of strategies to “close the gap”, strategies that have resulted in some spectacular successes, but also many great disappointments. One of the major positive results has been the increased training of first-nations’ nurses, doctors and allied health workers.
In 2007, I met Reg Richardson AM, modern art collector. Our discussion turned to philanthropy and the desperate need to improve the provision of quality medical care to remote and regional Aboriginal communities. Several organisations were involved in a variety of activities to address this, with variable coordination and little academic input.
Perhaps, I volunteered, an academic unit grounded in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney could stimulate academic involvement with more coordinated action, improved quality control, with an emphasis on outcomes research, thereby enhancing what was being achieved?
Reg liked these ideas, as did Professor Bruce Robinson AC, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney. After our three-way meeting, Reg spoke with his good friend and generous philanthropist Greg Poche AO, who was living in both Australia and the United States. After meeting with Bruce and the University Chancellor, Dame Marie Bashir AD, Greg donated $10 million dollars to the University, which in 2008, established the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health. Its goals were and remain “Through excellence in research, the Poche Centre aims to close the gap in life expectancy and other health outcomes with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”
I was privileged to serve on the Board of the Centre in its formative years.
Over the next few years, Greg Poche and his wife, Kay van Norton Poche, went on to establish similar Centres in each of the Australian capital cities: Brisbane (University of Queensland), Melbourne (University of Melbourne), Adelaide combined with Alice Springs (Flinders University) and Perth (University of Western Australia). Subsequently, a Poche Indigenous Health Network was established in Canberra (Australian National University), now led by Professor Tom Calma AO, to coordinate activities between these various Centres.
Scopus, the world’s largest database of peer-reviewed literature recently placed the University of Sydney as the global leader in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research, highlighting the contributions made by researchers at its Poche Centre. Many of these researchers have received an Outstanding Award from the Vice Chancellor for their own research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ people. Their work is critical to the Poche Centre’s ongoing ambition to close the gap in life expectancy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and to improve the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ communities.
This is precisely along the lines established in my first conversation with Reg. While much has been accomplished, and a firm platform has been established from which to act positively and constructively, the task ahead remains enormous.”