30/06/2025
We need systems that keep people well, not the systems that pick them up after they’re broken
For Fiona Stanley one of Australia’s leading experts in epidemiology, child and maternal health, and Indigenous health, these issues are all part of a bigger picture: rethinking what health really means, and who gets to shape it.
The real challenge, she argues, is getting policymakers to think beyond hospitals and specialist care. “If we want better health outcomes, the last thing we need is more doctors and more hospitals,” she says. “We need to invest in social supports, early intervention, community-led programs.”
Selected extracts from The Guardian article/ interview
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/28/dr-fiona-stanley-public-health-activist-walk-with?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
She points to the United States as a cautionary tale. “They spend more on health than anyone else and have the worst outcomes in the developed world,” she says. “We need systems that keep people well, not the systems that pick them up after they’re broken.”
Birthing on Country has become a national movement, says Stanley, holding up the book. “It’s about offering warm, family-centred care delivered by Aboriginal midwives, often in hospitals or clinics, supported by the best western diagnostics but under an Aboriginal-controlled umbrella.
“The outcomes are amazing. It’s halved preterm birth rates in Aboriginal births. It’s halved infant mortality. But the thing that really got me is that it reduced children being taken into out-of-home care by about 40% … What is that saying? That’s saying, ‘I’m a good mother. You can’t take my baby away.’”
Stanley is best known for founding the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, which became internationally recognised for showing that folic acid taken before and during pregnancy can prevent spina bifida. She also helped establish the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth, and was instrumental in setting up Aboriginal-controlled health research units.
That drive, she says, stems from both childhood idealism and hard-earned experience. Stanley grew up in Sydney in a prominent scientific household – her father, Neville Stanley, helped develop Australia’s polio vaccine before the family moved to Perth in 1956. As we stroll along the shoreline, she recalls a vivid dream she had at age eight. “We had this little boat on Sydney harbour,” she says. “So in my dream, I’d sail to these beautiful islands, vaccinate the locals, then sail off again. I had no idea what I was doing – but I knew I wanted to help.”
But the path became clearer years later, during her early days as a junior doctor at Princess Margaret hospital in Perth. “There was an Aboriginal boy, maybe four or five, who’d come in from a remote community,” she says. “He had severe diarrhoea and dehydration. And he died in my arms.” She pauses. “I was 25. And I remember thinking, I don’t know if I can keep doing clinical work. I need to understand how we prevent this.”
Soon after, she joined a volunteer medical team travelling to remote Aboriginal communities across Western Australia. “We went from the Eastern Goldfields to Mount Margaret, to every mission, reserve and camp … all the way up to Kalumburu,” she says. “I saw the conditions. I saw the racism. I saw the consequences.”
NACCHO Aboriginal Health Australia
Katie Kiss - Social Justice Commissioner
Coalition of Peaks
Senator Malarndirri McCarthy - Northern Territory
SNAICC-National Voice for our Children
Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia - AHCWA
