Dr Dan Wilson

Dr Dan Wilson is a leader within the health profession and the proud recipient of Griffith University’s Outstanding Young Alumni Award for Griffith Health. As a newly Fellowed (as of March 2023) Rural Generalist with the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, he has made significant contributions to improve health equity for regional and rural Australians.

Dan says he’s always had a fascination with science and knew he wanted to be involved in the medical profession from the age of six—although, at that time, his goal was to become a vet. But as with many from a small country town, he was told not to get his hopes up. “As a young boy I was quickly pushed away from that and told instead to push towards more accessible careers,” he explains.

After realising he was perhaps better suited to health and science, he became the first in his family to attend university, enrolling in an accelerated Bachelor of Biomedical Science with Honours at Griffith.

His studies eventually led to him becoming a Specialist General Practitioner (Rural Generalist) and GP obstetrician in the Grampians region, Victoria, with specialist areas of clinical interest including women's health, LGBTIQ+ and sexual health, medical education, and rural health. Dan is an awarded medical doctor: named the 2020 Future Male Leader of the Year, 2020 Outstanding Leader of the Year Overall, and Victoria’s 2019 Junior Doctor of the Year.

He says his commitment to inclusive leadership stems from his own diversity. He proudly identifies as a member of the LGBTIQ+ community, and first-in-family to pursue tertiary education. Having lived experience of how one’s postcode can influence one’s access to healthcare, Dan has been driven to effect meaningful and sustainable change for rural communities. He strongly believes that “achieving health equity in Australia is a battle that must be won, for the sake of everyone.”

“I find rural medicine very professionally rewarding,” he says. “You get to practice medicine from the beginning to the end of people's lives and look after generations of families. It is a privilege.”

Thanks to his time at Griffith, Dan has progressed thought leadership at national and international conferences. Most notably, he worked in consultation with colleagues to design Australia’s largest near-peer medical teaching program for the co-design of knowledge and skills between medical students and junior doctors, earning national recognition at the Australian and New Zealand Prevocational Medical Education Forum 2019.

“Winning an Outstanding Young Alumnus Award is so significant to me,” he says. “It's a recognition from peers that the work I've undertaken in pursuit of achieving more accessible and better-quality healthcare – particularly for regional rural Victorians but moreover, across the country – is something that is worth celebrating and it is something worth acknowledging.”

“It seems a little odd at the relatively young age of 30, and as an early career professional to tell my career or personal story to date, but the aspects people often latch on to about my story is identifying as queer and living in a rural community, and reconciling medical professional work while identifying as queer. How does that all fit in? How do you make it track professionally? How do you settle into a community and avoid queerphobia and homophobia?”

“And ultimately, my experience has been that in every single rural community I have journeyed through – with the privilege of being a healthcare professional – is that you are looked up to as a leader and figure within the community. And there will be times through which anyone who identifies with a marginalized group will experience feelings of vilification or discrimination, but ensure that you surround yourself with at least one peer or ally who, through those difficult times, can really pull you through and propel you to the pursuit of excellence.”

Dan’s biggest piece of advice for others hoping to follow in his footsteps is to accept any barriers to success as a challenge—a challenge that can be overcome, with professional reward and substantial community impact.