Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue to experience significant health inequities, making culturally informed, community led research more important than ever.
Professor Yvette Roe is a proud Njikina Jawuru woman and nationally recognised First Nations health researcher whose work is focused on improving health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through research, workforce development and self-determined approaches to care.
With more than 25 years of experience in Indigenous health, Professor Roe has led research across maternal and infant health, rural and remote health, and health service delivery, helping ensure research is grounded in the priorities and needs of First Nations communities.
Professor Roe is a member of NHMRC Council (2024–2027), where she brings critical expertise on First Nations health and wellbeing to help guide Australia's health and medical research agenda. She also serves as Chair of the NHMRC-MRFF Indigenous Advisory Group, which provides strategic advice on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and health research.
Behind every researcher is a story. Watch this video to discover the journey, experiences and insights that have shaped their work, and hear firsthand reflections from Yvette’s role as a researcher, leader and member of NHMRC Council.
- Video transcript
0:05 Professor Yvette Roe
I'm Yvette Roe. I'm a Njikena Jawuru woman from the West Kimberley.I'm the director of the Molly Wardaguga Institute for the First Nations Birth Rights, Charles Darwin University.
NHMRC funding allows us to work with our community's partners to really design services or address very complex problems that they want answers to, in a way that suits their needs, in priorities that they need to work through.
So, getting that research funding has been a means to answer very complex questions, to ensure that Indigenous methodologies are part of the approach that we take, but also part of the solutions.
And it's it's a very transformative relationship with research and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
And it's one way that we can elevate the aspirations of communities that we work with.
1:00
I've been really fortunate to be involved with NHMRC advisory committees and working groups for over a decade, and it's been a privilege to gain an insight into the mechanics of how research is funded, how it's rolled out, and how it's assessed.When I reflect on three key areas that NHMRC has made a difference to, I would suggest the intense, intense investment in building Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research capability.
The other one has been really ensuring that the aspirations of communities in the research assessment process, the Indigenous Research Excellence Criteria, which talks about key areas, but what's the benefit to community, what's the impact, how do we build capacity.
The last one I think, which has been very much a big step that NHMRC has taken, is understanding where research dollars have been invested in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander areas.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been researchers since millennia, so celebrating 90 years in NHMRC is just a blink of the eye.
2:05
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been involved with this, the research structure for no more than 35 years.So entering this field, we're building on the work that's being done by some of our key leaders, Professor Ian Anderson, Professor Sandra Eades, who have really paved the way to have access to research and different research platforms.
We have just gone through a international pandemic, COVID.
The leadership for NHMRC to bring some of our leading researchers into that space on how to work with community to address the pandemic is probably the most recent fundamental way on how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers have been part of that space.
To be at the forefront of setting strategies and communities understanding, ensuring that community aspirations and communities are safe. I think that has been a prime example of that when you bring community to the table, especially around research, when you have a new thing on the the landscape, such as a pandemic, then you get some terrific outcomes. I think that's something that NHMRC and Australia should be amazingly proud of.
End of transcript.