Christine Phillips, who lives in Canberra, said it was “completely unexpected” but would go down as the highlight of her rewarding career.
Christine has been the medical director at Companion House, a community organisation based in Canberra offering medical and welfare services to asylum seekers and refugees, for 16 years.
Her work towards establishing the Refugee Health Network of Australia helped to improve collaboration and sharing of health information and resources between services.
“People (refugees) were undernourished and unwell because they couldn’t access health care, sometimes with chronic illness and reproductive issues,” Christine said.
“People say, ‘It must be sad and difficult’ and it is, but it’s also joyful, people are amazingly resilient, and you learn so much from the ability of people to survive.
“I get far more back than I give.”
But Christine, who is also a professor at the Australian National University’s medical school, said getting to where she was today had not been easy.
When she graduated from St Joseph’s College at Echuca in 1980 she said there was no pathway to get into medicine.
“It required a lot of work from the school because it was quite difficult to get into medicine from country towns, I wasn’t aware of anyone before me who had,” she said.
Christine paid tribute to her “remarkable” former school.
“It was very inclusive and welcoming, I was really happy to be there and those values really stayed with me,” she said.
“They gave me my life in medicine and I’m always grateful that’s where I got my education.”
The school helped her become one of just five country students (out of 180) at the University of Melbourne medical school.
Reflecting on her decorated career, Christine said it had been remarkable to, at times, treat three generations of patients.
She also said her father, Peter Phillips, a surgeon in Echuca for 30 years, had been one of the driving forces behind her career.
She said she remembered tagging along on visits to the Cummeragunja mission where she realised how “structurally unfair” the world was.
“Not everybody shares in the nation’s wealth and opportunities,” she said.
“I never forgot that.”
Which is why Christine has dedicated most of her life to changing that narrative and helping those most in need.
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