Written By
Janine Lucas
College/Division
College of Medicine and Dentistry
Publish Date
6 August 2021
Related Study Areas
Professor Sarah Larkins brings a wealth of experience from 25 years in research and general practice, primarily in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health settings. Her work has been heavily invested from the outset in the College’s mission to build a fit-for-purpose medical workforce in regional, rural and remote Australia.
As a medical student on clinical elective in the heart of Australia, Professor Sarah Larkins set her course in life.
“In year six of my medical degree, I did a medical elective at Amata, which is a tiny Aboriginal community on the Pitjantjatjara lands, about 100 kilometres south of Uluru,” Sarah says.
“I saw a community with lots and lots of cultural strengths but also huge health inequities and issues with access to health care. At that point I decided Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health had to be something I focused on in my medical career.”
Pride in our graduates
After completing her junior doctor training in her hometown of Melbourne, Professor Larkins headed north to train as a general practitioner and embark on a distinguished research career focused on working in partnership to strengthen health systems and improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.
From teaching JCU’s first medicine cohort in a room at the back of the library to directing research for the Division of Tropical Health and Medicine, she has been part of the College’s 20-year life.
More than two decades of clinical practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled health services and private general practice in Ayr, Townsville and Mount Isa, often with a student or GP Registrar in tow, have informed her research and teaching.
Sarah is passionate about the College’s mission to train health professionals who make a difference in regional, rural and remote Australia.
“Our education and training activities across all disciplines in the College – medicine, dentistry pharmacy and general practice training – share that mission and we orient our research to the priority needs of the populations we serve,” she says.
“We've got the figures to demonstrate that we’re the most successful university in the country at training health professionals for rural and remote Australia. JCU’s six-year undergraduate medicine model, designed with and for rural and remote communities, is really delivering the goods. Our medicine, dentistry and pharmacy graduates are prized for their fitness for practice and work readiness.
“We've got a lot of runs on the board in terms of socially accountable education and training and measuring the impact of what we do. But we can't afford to rest on our laurels. It's important to continue to do things better. One area we want to focus on is ensuring we recruit more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students into our programs and provide better support to ensure larger numbers graduate. We want to build and strengthen the research endeavour right across the College, in partnership with the communities we serve and our industry partners.”
Research that empowers
Sarah challenges ivory tower perceptions of research. “When we're talking about research, we're talking about working in partnership in the community to make things work better,” she says. “We need to work right across the spectrum. We need to do the benchtop science, but we then take it out to clinics and into the community and extend it to population level.
“When we think about strengthening the system in north Queensland, it's important for us to consider health service delivery hubs that are also foci of learning and teaching for our students and hubs of research activity where local clinicians and community members can come together to address the local problems and work together with regional researchers to solve those problems. One of the things that's really important to me is that all of the research is a partnership. It's not done in isolation. Working very closely with communities and co-researchers is crucial to the type of work I do.”
With internationally recognised expertise in social accountability in health professional education, Sarah has published more than 130 research papers and several book chapters, securing more than $90 million in grant funding. It’s a long way from her earliest venture into the research realm, in a University of Melbourne laboratory.
“As a medical student, I took the year out and did a Bachelor of Medical Science. That was lab based in Melbourne and looked at the role of the gubernaculum in testicular descent. It was a paediatric surgery project and very, very different from what I do now,” she says.
While dividing her work week between training as a GP, teaching and doing a Master of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Sarah started a family – she has three sons, Sam, 23, Max, 20, and Tom, 16.“I gradually got into some research as a GP registrar and decided to do a PhD based on my clinical work, exploring teenage pregnancy from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective and what we can do better to understand and support young parents, because 20 per cent of the women we were seeing in the clinic, having babies, were teenagers,” she says.
“Then I got more and more into health services and health systems research, which is essentially all about working in partnership with health system colleagues, with people in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled sector, to make the whole system fairer and work better for everyone. My passion is for making things work better and making things fairer, but also inspiring the next generation of learners in medicine and in other health professions and contributing to the same journey for up-and-coming health researchers.”
Partners in innovation
Sarah is excited about the research coming out of JCU’s partnerships, including with the Tropical Australian Academic Health Centre. She’s involved in a project, co-led with Associate Professor Catrina Felton-Busch, with the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Centre of Research Excellence – Strengthening systems for Indigenous health care equity (CRE-STRIDE).
"WOMB – WOmen’s action for Mums and Bubs – is about empowering women in Aboriginal communities to come up with ideas to improve the health of mums and bubs. With CRE-STRIDE there’s also The LEAP Project, which is about overcoming barriers to quality improvement in Aboriginal primary health care,” she says.
“We’re also working with the Co-operative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia. We did a health sector situational analysis last year and we're now exploring and putting into practice place-based planning to strengthen health systems,” she says. “That's got great potential in terms of looking at how we can better break down funding silos, support the workforce and deliver joined-up, integrated care for people in particular areas.”
Sarah says as a socially accountable educator of health professionals, the College must ensure its medicine, dentistry and pharmacy graduates are going where they're needed and doing what's required to meet those needs.
“That also involves working closely together to advocate and drive change in an equity-focused direction,” she says.
Learn more about how JCU’s College of Medicine and Dentistry is making rural health matter.
Featured researcher
Professor Sarah Larkins
Dean, College of Medicine and Dentistry
Dr Sarah Larkins is Dean of the College of Medicine and Dentistry at JCU. A general practitioner and Professor of Health Systems Strengthening, she is also Director of Research Development for the Division of Tropical Health and Medicine, Co-Director of the Anton Breinl Research Centre for Health Systems Strengthening and Convenor, Clinical Leadership Group, Tropical Australian Academic Health Centre.
Sarah is passionate about collaborating to improve health equity for underserved populations, particularly rural, remote, Indigenous and tropical populations, and training a health workforce with appropriate knowledge, attitudes and skills for this purpose. Working with fantastic teams, Sarah undertakes participatory applied research in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, health services and workforce, and social accountability in health professional education.