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CRC-REP Newsletter - May 2011

Dear friends and colleagues –

Health research underway

CRC-REP’s research effort into the ‘Interplay between Health, Wellbeing, Education and Employment’ is under way, with a highly successful two-day workshop attended by more than 20 researchers and partners in Alice Springs.

“This is a very complex area and a lot of the focus at the workshop was on working out the key interactions – and how we can best measure them,” explains Steve Fisher, who facilitated the workshop. “A lot of time was devoted to mapping out how issues such as culture, living conditions and employment prospects can affect health. It is vital to invest time in this now so we make the right choices about what to study and measure from the outset.”

The workshop has yielded "some really good insights into how we might model these various influences on remote health, and the interplays between them," he adds. Time was also devoted to discussing how best to engage Aboriginal communities and individuals in the work, both as researchers and in collecting data.

Chief Investigator John Wakerman, from the Centre for Remote Health in Alice Springs which manages the Interplay program, said that he felt the workshop went extremely well and established a good feeling between a very diverse group of researchers from all the different sectors involved. “It was the first step of a long journey, but now we have a much clearer idea where we are heading and the issues we need to discuss with remote communities.”

Our new health leader

A warm welcome to Dr Sheree Cairney, recently appointed as principal research leader of our key research project on the Interplay between Health, Wellbeing Education and Employment. Sheree is best known for her outstanding work on petrol sniffing, alcohol, drug and tobacco use and mental health issues in remote communities. She completed her doctorate at LaTrobe University on the effects of petrol sniffing on the brain in 2003 and for the past seven years has worked as senior research fellow at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, developing and managing its Cognitive Neuroscience research program for Indigenous health. She is a Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Neurology, at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA, and a graduate of the ABC’s science communication program.

Chief Investigator John Wakerman says “Sheree comes to us with really extensive experience in both research and working with remote communities. She has an excellent record in translating the results of research at the community level as well as great enthusiasm.”

Plant business

File 353

Desert raisins, also known as bush tomatoes

Did you know that Australia has more than 6132 catalogued species of edible plants – of which we routinely eat only half a dozen: that’s only 0.1 per cent! The fabulous culinary wealth of our native flora, deeply studied by our Aboriginal people over generations of course, is still largely a closed book to the rest of Australia, and CRC-REP thinks it’s time to open it.

With this in mind, Aboriginal bush foods harvesters, food firms and researchers gathered in Alice Springs last month for a 1-day workshop to share viewpoints and get CRC-REP’s new Plant Business research on the road. Facilitator Steve Fisher says that a big part of the discussion centred on how best to involve remote communities and engage local Aboriginal researchers in the project. “There was also a lot of discussion about the value chain and how to engage with it,” he adds.

“There was general agreement that this is a small industry, vulnerable to the big food players and to seasonal fluctuations in supply. But people were also optimistic that research has much to contribute – and there is undoubtedly a strong sense of commitment to a successful bush foods industry among the main players.”

Desert raisins

Staff training event

Twenty-seven CRC-REP and Ninti One staff undertook a most enjoyable 3-day development course in Alice Springs Desert Knowledge Precinct and Desert Park in March. Issues covered included: What are our personal leadership styles and traits? How do we work as a team? How do we learn with other people and organisations? What tools and processes enable us to communicate well with each other and with people in partner organisations?

Over the professional learning program we reflected on our Myers Briggs and Influence Dimensions profiles, looked at performance development plans through the Balanced Scorecard, played cricket, rode camels, heard about Ampere culture and people from the Eastern Arrernte Elders from Akeyulerre Aboriginal Healing Centre, and enjoyed a delicious bush food dinner under the stars. Staff gave the program a big thumbs up in their evaluations.

Watch out for: our Microsoft 2010 training course later this month.

Change of address

All partners, stakeholders, colleagues, staff and friends please note, from April 28 CRC-REP and Ninti One have switched across from the CSIRO email server to our own mail server.

This means all CRC-REP and Ninti One staff email addresses that were firstname.lastname@csiro.au have now changed to firstname.lastname@nintione.com.au.

From now on please use the @nintione.com.au address for all correspondence, incoming or outgoing. Please let your contacts know.

Our people: Chris Duncan

File 352
Born and raised in the south eastern suburbs of Sydney, Chris Duncan went to Teachers’ College in the 1970s and taught primary school in Sydney before doing an Honours Degree in Geography at the University of New England in the 1980s and a PhD at the University of Newcastle in the 1990s.

He is currently seconded to Ninti One from the NT Government, where he has worked for the past two and a half years. Prior to arriving in Darwin, Chris headed up the National Centre for Education and Training Statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics in Canberra and has also taught Human geography at university.

He says one of the most enjoyable features of a job with Ninti One is working in a small organisation that places a high priority on each of us contributing to the creation of a harmonious and highly productive workplace. On what motivates him he says, “That’s easy. I believe in the transformative power of education.”

Chris’ favourite movie is The Purple Rose of Cairo and his current read is J.M.Coetzee’s Summertime. Of weekends, he says “Enjoying living in the tropics has not yet lost its novelty value: walking the dogs on the beach at sunset, cooking a special meal, spending some quiet time with my partner.”

He admits his worst habit is not getting enough sleep - but hates being told to go to bed! His current goal in life is “Living in the moment.” On who has motivated him, Chris says “No one famous – just some famously good people. I had a couple of great coaches, teachers and lecturers and worked with a couple of inspirational people in the Australian Public Service. Each of them believed they had the capacity to make a difference.”

At CRC-REP, like Chris, we all believe we can make a difference.