Radio Interview - ABC Newcastle Drive with Paul Culliver
Transcript - March 19, 2024
FEiA Program Coordinator; James Flint
Transcript
PAUL CULLIVER (HOST): Well, did you know? Australia spends a whole bunch of money overseas in aid and making a difference abroad. Why do we do that? Well, there's a couple of reasons, of course, you've got the idea of soft diplomacy. Australia wants to have an influence, but also because it's a good thing, it makes a difference to others living in our region, including in the Pacific, where Australia does spend a whole bunch of money on improving health outcomes. But did you know, a bunch of locals, people from Newcastle make some of that difference. In fact, seven and a half million dollars of an Australian government grant has just been announced that it's going to be going towards continued efforts by the University of Newcastle and Hunter New England local health district. It's a partnership. And someone who knows all about it, James Flint, School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle. Hello to you, James. Congratulations on securing this grant to continue your work. What is that work?
JAMES FLINT (PROGRAM COORDINATOR): Yeah, thanks. It's super exciting. We have funding for the next four years to continue and to expand the work that we do in the Pacific. We are a team of Public health experts from Hunter New England, University of Newcastle, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, and we do field epidemiology training. We train local healthcare workers in kind of the art of field epidemiology. We also support the practice and implementation of field epidemiology in the in the Pacific. We're super excited to be able to continue and expand this work in the region.
PAUL CULLIVER: All right, field epidemiology. What does that look like? what is that?
JAMES FLINT: Yeah, great question. A few know what it is after the pandemic, but basically it's all about preventing people from getting sick and preventing people from dying from from disease. And it's really done through evidence-based decision making. So a lot of our training is focused on collecting data, analyzing data, interpreting it and then designing a response, to designing an intervention based on those findings. So that's what we're doing. We're training local healthcare workers at the very front lines at the district, provincial, national level to use data to guide their evidence-based decision making and really understand a health problem and design their own solution to that health problem.
PAUL CULLIVER: What does it mean when you empower, when you teach local health authorities about field epidemiology? How to deal with disease outbreaks in their own community? What difference does that make?
JAMES FLINT: Having the local team kind of identify the solution just makes so much sense. We're not about us flying in and solving problems for them. It's equipping them with the skills and knowledge to identify the solutions to the problems they're familiar with on the frontline.
They design interventions as part of our training, they go and then they implement these interventions, they monitor to see if there's been any impact. And what's awesome about these programs is they're housed within the the provincial or national ministries of health. So they are looking at the results being generated by these trainees, these public health workers. And in some cases they're using them to guide their policy and decision making and replicate and scale all these local interventions that are super successful, so it's really exciting to see that.
PAUL CULLIVER: It's the University of Newcastle teaming up with Hunter New England local health districts. It's a partnership, has been around for about a decade now. How did that come about? Why did you guys decide this is something we could do together and go over there and make a difference.
JAMES FLINT: Yeah, a lot of it is just my boss, Doctor Dave Durrheim, who you're probably familiar with, and his passion for international public health and a team at Hunter New England who was super passionate about it as well. And being successful in getting some government funding through DFAT, the Centre for Health Security. To be able to expand our work and engage with the University of Newcastle, so we have some great epidemiologists and other public health workers through the University who partner with us on this work as well as our staff in the countries and our colleagues in the countries as well.
PAUL CULLIVER: So you started in Papua New Guinea and now you're starting to expand into other countries.
JAMES FLINT: We've been working for 10 years in Papua New Guinea running these programs. So we have a few different ones. It's not just one, most of them are around field epidemiology. Some of them are rapid response team training as well, which is related. Our newest program is frontline, we call it the Frontline Field Epi training program and it's a One Health approach. So it not just focuses on public health, it includes animal, wildlife, environmental health as well. So that's really exciting to see that cross section of workers coming together in country to work on common challenges. We've also expanded to the Solomon Islands. The program is actually really unique. There's about 90 field epidemiology training programs globally. So Papua New Guinea is one of those 90, but it's quite unique in the focus it has on the interventions on actually doing something with the data collected. It's one of the very few countries that actually really focus on the intervention side of things and that's got a lot of attention and it is just fantastic to see and inspiring to see the students doing these incredible projects are making a real difference. So other countries in the Pacific were really interested and Solomon Islands was the next one to show interest. They've been running a very similar program for the last few years and now Vanuatu is interested. We've been doing a bit in Timor-Leste and also potentially Fiji.
PAUL CULLIVER: So if my math is correct, when COVID hit the program had been going, what about five or six years. So did that play a role that the fact that you've been on the ground, you've been teaching local teams and authorities? Did it come into play in their response to COVID?
JAMES FLINT: Absolutely. Yeah, it did. I'd say most of the leads in the COVID response in Papua New Guinea were graduates from our programs. They all stepped up into really leadership roles at all the different levels in the system, from the health centre level, right up to national level. It was really encouraging to see them being utilised for a massive response and they're very much on the front lines involved in the COVID response. We were able to get our team over there as well a few times. Even with lockdown, we were able to, with support from DFAT, get into country and provide a bit of on the ground mentoring and support as well throughout the pandemic.
PAUL CULLIVER: What are some of the other diseases, what are the other challenges that are currently present in in different Pacific countries?
JAMES FLINT: There's a lot. The big ones are tuberculosis, especially drug resistant TB and HIV, malaria, pertussis, a lot of the vaccine preventable diseases, COVID had a big impact actually on the coverage of a lot of these. Diseases which are easily prevented through routine immunisation, but beyond infectious disease, there's challenges like maternal mortality, gender-based violence and then there's a whole range of non-communicable diseases like diabetes. The beauty of this program is we don't tell people what to study, what disease to focus on. They focus on the disease they know is most important in their communities. So it's a whole range of things. It's awesome to see them tackling the biggest health challenges in their countries.
PAUL CULLIVER: So you sign up to be or, you become part of these health teams for the University of Newcastle and Hunter New England local health districts. Next thing you know, you could be making a huge difference on the ground in Papua New Guinea or Vanuatu or Solomon Islands.
JAMES FLINT: Yeah, it's exciting. It's a real privilege to work alongside our colleagues in these countries are inspiring. Every year I'm inspired by the projects that they're doing, After 10 years I thought I'd get used to it, but every year I get blown away by the amazing work they're doing.
PAUL CULLIVER: That's fantastic. Well, congratulations again on securing another grant. It's four more years. Hopefully you can stay in touch and let us know how it's all going, but fascinating to get an insight into the work that you're doing. Thank you, James.
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