Dr Vanessa Lee - Ah Mat

“When you open a door for yourself, you need to ensure that it stays open for others to walk through”.  That’s the philosophy of social epidemiologist, cultural broker and social activist Dr Vanessa Lee - Ah Mat.

A Yupungathi and Meriam woman who grew up between Cape York, the Torres Strait and Mossman, Vanessa was the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander PhD female graduate from the Faculty of Medicine at Griffith University. Since then, she’s also been the first National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Vice President of the Public Health Association of Australia and the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander director on the board of Suicide Prevention Australia and chair of the Indigenous advisory group for RUOK?.  Vanessa is also a contributing member of the NSW Domestic Family Violence steering committee.

“For a number of years, I was the only Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander social epidemiologist I knew of,” she explained. “And you know in human rights and social justice work nobody sits around thinking ‘Where can I be the first to do … whatever’, because it should already be a given that diversity and inclusion is considered in national and international policy-making as it is a human right.  In that sense, and coming from humbled beginnings, I sort of think of myself as an accidental leader.”

“I didn’t set out to be first, all I saw were avenues to make change for Aboriginal and Torres Islander people, women and the LGBTIQ+ population, for our health, to close the gap in life expectancy and increase wellbeing and wellness.” she said.

“The countries who were there stood back and went, ‘Oh, we hadn’t even realised that.’”

Ultimately, one of Vanessa’s main goals with her work is to ensure that we don’t leave people behind by ensuring that we make visible the voices that are invisible. “We need to make collective change,” she emphasised. “I've got to the point now where I will actually ask, ‘Am I going to be the only woman here? Am I the only Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person? Am I the only LGBTIQ+ person? I cannot wear all the hats. Who else is going to be part of this conversation? This matters’ because nobody knows what somebody else has gone through to bring them to the situation of which they have found themselves in and when someone with the lived experience steps up to contribute to change then we need to open the door to them.

Having come from the lived experience of racism and inequity herself, Vanessa has courageously penned issues experienced by black Indigenous people, such as racism and discrimination, lived humour, earthly connection and environmental disharmony in her poetry book Cockatoos in the Mangrove, published last year by Exlibris. “It is somewhat of a confessional style of poetry bringing together the social and life issues that I have witnessed and how I have used poetry as part of my healing,” Vanessa acknowledged. “It could help people to realise that others have had similar experiences.”

“Young people, especially for Indigenous people and the LGBTIQ+ population, as they too are the future generation and their voices need to be heard and they need to be included in decision-making so that they can have hope and autonomy in knowing that they are part of creating the future, and to live longer; that's what is important. We also need to have more voices of women at the table. We are the mothers, the sisters, the wives, the grandmothers, the aunties, the creators ... We are the backbones of society and our voices should be heard.”