Ms Ann-Maree Nobelius

Originally employed in November 2001 by Jo Wainer to write several reports for the Commonwealth Government on the Gender Issues in Rural Practice Project for the School of Rural Health , Monash University , she became the Project Officer for the Gender Working Party in July of 2002.

In this role she was responsible for demonstrating the need for gender mainstreaming in the new 5 year medical curriculum at Monash. This involved advocating for the mainstreaming by developing relationships with key faculty and curriculum 'gatekeepers', outlining the rationale for mainstreaming and demonstrating its value through the development of gender-specific curriculum and assessment. Ann-Maree was also responsible for the organisation and content of a number of the Monash seminars and symposia, a presentation to the Doctors Reform Society, undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and tutor and faculty training on gender and mainstreaming. She has recently written 'Gender and Medicine: a conceptual guide for medical educators' which will become core of faculty and clinical teacher training at Monash.

She is now employed by the Centre for Medicine and Health Sciences Education (CMHSE), Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences to mainstream a gender perspective throughout the medical curriculum.

Ann-Maree attributes her skills in mainstreaming a gender perspective in medicine to her ability to ‘speak both languages; medicine and social sciences’. She completed an undergraduate medical sciences degree with pharmacology and physiology majors, and biochemistry and microbiology minors at Monash University in 1988. She then completed a Masters in Reproductive Sciences at Monash in 1990 with a thesis in endocrine research. After a year of medical research she developed an interest in HIV prevention. After realising that HIV prevention rests largely on the modification of social behaviour she returned to university to study social sciences, particularly gender studies and qualitative research techniques.

She was offered a scholarship at the Australian National University to undertake a PhD in Public Health. She conducted a sexual health needs assessment in out-of-school adolescents in rural south-west Uganda with the Medical Research Council Programme (UK) on AIDS in Uganda, which outlines the contextual health service and educational needs of the most HIV affected age group in the community who also have the least social and political power. She lived in a village in Uganda for a year to collect the data for this project and retains an enduring commitment to her community and appropriate health service provision to socially disadvantaged people and developing countries more generally.

In March of 2005 she received an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) to complete her PhD by publication at Monash again in the School of Rural Health.