Profile: Rosemary Aldrich

This journalist turned public health physician thinks that both jobs are similar

I was once introduced at a seminar as someone who was unable to make up her mind. I have studied and worked as a journalist, media producer, researcher, clinician, health service manager, public health physician, and lecturer. And yet all my qualifications and experience come together in my current occupation as a full time health policy student.

At 17 I studied journalism at university, where my privileged eyes were opened to Marxist analyses of the instruments of ideology, including the media. I trained in social history, writing, and media production and my final project--a postcolonisation social history of Australia's Torres Strait--was broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the evening of my 21st birthday.

At the time there was some media focus on the impacts that multinational food producers were having on breastfeeding by mothers in developing countries. I was outraged and determined to put my mass communication training to good use. After jobs in film, television, and advertising, I moved to a job in health promotion in 1982. I was told that if I wanted to get anywhere in public health, I had to become a doctor.

I had thought about medicine before, but thought it impossible as I had not studied maths, biology, chemistry, or physics since I was 15 years old. I was, however, accepted into the bachelor of medicine programme at the University of Newcastle, aged 23. The Newcastle course still uses a problem based learning approach, which exposes students to clinical situations in their first few weeks, while emphasising the core skills and knowledge of both clinical and public health medicine. This approach really suited me. I supported myself until my final year by working part time as a research officer in public health and as a police reporter and subeditor on the Newcastle Herald, our local daily broadsheet.

After graduating (with honours), I worked as a resident medical officer and registrar in internal medicine and infectious diseases. When the Royal Australasian College of Physicians established its faculty of public health medicine in 1990, I was right in there an early trainee. I gained credit for my work experience in health promotion and public health research, completed a masters degree in public health, and worked in environmental health and epidemiology until I qualified as a public health physician.

I worked as the director of medical services at a 120 bed hospital, which gave me valuable experience in health politics and health services management. A few years later, I became the executive officer of the Newcastle Institute of Public Health (NIPH, www.niph.org.au), a collaboration of more than 20 public and private sector public health and health services research groups in New South Wales. NIPH staff work to develop collaborative, multidisciplinary public health and health services research in health services quality and delivery, ageing, health inequalities, and the application of behavioural science in relation to medicine and health. I have also recently become a member of the health advisory committee of Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (www.nhmrc.gov.au), and have an academic position in public health at the University of Newcastle.

I enjoy teaching, but options in Australia are limited for people without a doctorate. So I am now undertaking a full time PhD. I am researching how politics, history, and values have influenced the evolution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health policy since 1973. I am examining the role of my professional peers and predecessors, seeking to explain why Australia's national government policy has failed to deliver substantial health gain to Australia's indigenous peoples. I have stopped teaching for now and work with NIPH on a part time basis.

I consider that my training in journalism and mass communication was also the start of my training in public health as I was taught to think critically and creatively. Over the years I have acquired skills in a wide range of methods of investigation. I report, teach, present, and advise in many different settings and have managed teams of staff from 2 to 120 people. All this has been made easier by understanding how communication happens and what language means. Journalism training is an excellent background for medicine and public health. Both rely on detective skills to gather and evaluate evidence, and both demand an ability to communicate.

My diverse training has given me many interesting and satisfying work options. I've always had an idea of the sort of work I wanted to do "eventually" (inspired by my early passions), and I have sought jobs which could give me the experience and training to equip me for that. I still consider myself "in training," and I still get excited about what else I might be doing in five or 10 years. I think it is useful to have a vague idea of what you want to do or where you want to go, even if it seems unlikely or a long way off. Take whatever opportunities arise, and enjoy the journey as much as arriving. And even if what you do now is not what you plan to do in the longer term, it will add to who you are and help to shape how you think.

And now I bring all my communication and public health training and experience to my present task: examining the who, what, when, where, how, and why of health policy decision making in Australia. Just like my newspaper days really.

Rosemary Aldrich, executive officer, Newcastle Institute of Public Health, Level 2 David Maddison Building, Corner Watt and King Streets, Newcastle NSW 2300, Australia


studentBMJ 2002;10:215-258 July ISSN 0966-6494