Improving health outcomes for Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people
Motivated by the chance to deliver better health outcomes for Indigenous populations, Sharon Ponniah joined The George Institute in 2012 as Program Manager for the Kanyini Vascular Collaboration.
“Kanyini really offers a unique opportunity to improve health outcomes through integrated, holistic research that focuses on Aboriginal health and wellbeing”, says Sharon.
Motivated by the chance to deliver better health outcomes for Indigenous populations, Sharon Ponniah joined The George Institute in 2012 as Program Manager for the Kanyini Vascular Collaboration.
“Kanyini really offers a unique opportunity to improve health outcomes through integrated, holistic research that focuses on Aboriginal health and wellbeing”, says Sharon.
Kanyini aims to identify and overcome barriers to best practice chronic disease care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. As Program Manager for the Collaboration, Sharon manages three new projects that recently received funding from the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute. The new projects include developing an Indigenous chronic care model, assessing the feasibility of delivering holistic care for chronic disease in the home setting and a stress, depression and chronic disease study.
The Kanyini program of work aligns perfectly with Sharon’s expertise and enthusiasm for improving health inequalities. She has a PhD in Public Health where she investigated youth smoking and smoking cessation in New Zealand with a particular focus on Maori.
With extensive experience in the management of national Public Health Programmes, Sharon has spent the last several years focused on national and Indigenous (Māori) health in New Zealand, managing national surveys in health, tobacco control and sexual health. More recently, she managed a range of national health programs at the Pharmaceutical Management Agency of New Zealand (PHARMAC), including improving the use of antipsychotics for dementia, developing an access scheme for nicotine replacement therapy in prisons, managing a randomized control trial to deliver asthma education intervention in early childhood education centres and managing the ‘Space to Breathe’ childhood asthma programme that provides a suite of education and best practice support to caregivers of children with asthma, including health professionals. Prior to joining The George, Sharon worked for Saatchi and Saatchi Healthcare (Publicis Life Brands) as a medical education consultant for a number of leading Pharmaceutical companies.
“Working in the public health arena is very fulfilling. I relish the opportunity to translate robust research into evidence-based sustainable health programmes which make an impact on communities and populations most in need.”
Joining The George in May 2012, Sharon says she was enticed by the alignment of public health philosophies and the ability to work on innovative projects that use evidence to guide improvements in health programmes, initiatives, service delivery and policy.
Her hope for the Kanyini program is that the collaboration continues to grow and branch into other regions of Australia as well as help to build Indigenous research capacity in field.
