Catherine
Mum of three, Olivia, Riley and Lucy.
Founder of the Light for Riley campaign, Chair of the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines & Infectious Diseases Community Reference Group, Director of the Immunisation Foundation of Australia.
I attended a Community Conversation about Vaccination and Infectious Diseases, shortly after my son succumbed to whooping cough. It felt so good to be expressing my thoughts on the subject and I was really impressed that a research institution was considering and measuring community opinion! At the event I found out more about community involvement opportunities at Telethon Kids and couldn't help but say 'yes' when asked to join various groups and projects!
Good research is the foundation of all meaningful health interventions, and the best research is research that involves the community and is 'with' the community. This is where Telethon Kids excels - the consumer voice is heard at all levels and across all areas of research, and it's very motivating to be part of research that is so highly valued by the community. Ultimately, I believe that community input in research helps to ensure research is meaningful to communities, relevant to communities, understood by communities and translatable into interventions that community members are more likely to adopt.