Robyn is a New Zealand and Australian trained Family Physician and Public Health Practitioner with over 30 years’ experience and she returns to Australia to work in those roles periodically. Since moving to Florida with her family in 2014 her passion for lifestyle medicine has led her to also become certified as a health coach through the National Society of Health Coaches. She is equipped with the skills and credentials to help clients make lasting behavioral change and achieve optimum health and wellness.

Full time position involving public health work in conjunction with government and other partners such as WHO and JICA to provide technical support for the planning, development, implementation, assessment and monitoring of routine and special immunization programs in Pacific Island countries. This involved regular travel to most Pacific Island countries to work with their immunization teams, undertaking teaching workshops, immunization campaigns, and working with partners to coordinate an annual Immunization Conference.

I was seconded to Fiji School of Medicine, School of Public Health and Primary Care where I acted as a link to the NZ team as the University of Auckland Project Manager for initiation of the Traffic Related Injuries in the Pacific Project. This project sought to gain knowledge about traffic accidents in Fiji, and to use this information to prioritize specific interventions. A second equally important component was capacity building, helping to train a Pacific workforce with skills to address these and other safety issues. I was part of the team responsible for effective and efficient administration of the project, including conduct of the study, training programs and workshops, staff and participant recruitment processes, data quality assurance, and formulation of project deliverables such as progress reports and the Standard Operations Manual.

177 Health Care Plan (177 HCP) provided medical services for those 15,000 people originally from the atolls recognized as having been affected by radiation from the US nuclear testing program in the Republic of the Marshall Islands in 1940s and 1950s. An American health care company Trinity Health International held the contract for these services and 177 HCP comprised a clinic in the main center Majuro where I was one of the 2 doctors providing primary health care, and also a further 4 clinics on the outer islands initially staffed by a health assistant. In the latter part of my time there the need for a different approach became apparent and I became coordinator for the 177 Primary Health Care Initiative which involved annual recruitment of 4 doctors from Nepal to live on each of these outer islands for which we were responsible. We aimed to provide comprehensive primary care and my job involved program design and equipment and supply logistics, plus personal support for the doctors. 177 staff worked closely with Public Health staff of the Marshall Islands Ministry of Health on programs such as STIs, immunizations, reproductive health, TB and leprosy treatment and this necessitated my monitoring these programs and coordinating our visits to the outer islands with them in a timely manner. Special projects involved coordinating vaccination for our outer island patients during the Republic of Marshall Islands measles outbreak of 2004; a TB and leprosy survey of Utirik Atoll with the assistance of the CDC; and working with the WHO STEPS project collecting data on non-communicable diseases.