Yatdjuligin: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nursing and Midwifery Care

About

Odette Best is a Wakgun clan member of the Gurreng Gurreng Nation and holds a Boonthamurra bloodline with adoption ties to the Koomumberri Yugambeh people. Odette is  Professor and Associate Head: Indigenous Research and Community Engagement School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Southern Queensland (Ipswich Campus). She commenced her training at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in the late 1980s and further holds a Bachelor of Health Sciences (double major in Aboriginal Health and Community Development) Master of Philosophy and a PhD. Odette has worked for 30 years in Indigenous health. Clinically Odette worked for a decade as sexual health coordinator at the Brisbane Aboriginal and Islander Community Health Service and within the women's and youth prison systems across Brisbane. In 2000 Odette moved into discipline teaching within nursing in tertiary sector. Odette's leadership in Indigenous health and Indigenous nurse research is acknowledged globally and she is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (the only Aboriginal Australian nurse) a Churchill Fellow (the first Aboriginal Australian nurse) and a Fellow of the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives. As an historian of Aboriginal nurses and midwives Odette is passionate about uncovering and documenting the experiences of Aboriginal nurses and midwives and saving them from historical oblivion. Odette is Ivy Molly Booth's granddaughter. Bronwyn Fredericks an Indigenous woman from South-East Queensland with over 30 years of experience working in and with the tertiary sector State and Federal Governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-based organisations. She is a Professor and the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement) at the University of Queensland and still maintains an active research program. Prof Fredericks is a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Research Advisory Committee (RAC) the Beyond Blue National Research Advisory Committee and a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts. In 2016 Bronwyn was appointed as the Commissioner with the Queensland Productivity Commission (QPC) (one of only two appointments) to lead the Inquiry into service delivery in Queensland's remote and discrete Indigenous communities. In 2018 she was again appointed to work on Queensland's Inquiry into Imprisonment and Recidivism which was completed in 2019.