Find out what inspires Dr Peter Tait, a general practitioner based in Alice Springs, at the Central Austrailan Aboriginal Congress. Peter has managed to maintain diverse interests, and has been an Australian leader in peace activism, environmental health, and public health. He is a strong advocate to improve the health of Indigenous Australians and speaks three local languages – Warlpiri, Arrnete and Pitjantjatjara.
GHG: Tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up? How did you choose your career?
PT: I’m a father of two children (now grown up) who are out in the world ‘on their own’, based in Sydney, 
which is also where I did high school and university, and where most of my own family lives. My primary school years were spent in Brisbane. I went into medicine perhaps because my mother had wanted to do medicine but in ‘those days’ women didn’t do medicine (according to her father, who had to pay for it) so she had to settle for dietetics. However, when I wanted to be an engineer, my father told me I didn’t have the math for that, and my mother pointed me toward medicine. I guess they gave expert career advice because it has worked out.
The path to rural general practice was sown at a Scout Jamboree in the early 1970s where I volunteered to help out at the medical tent; Michael Grounds from Traralgon was the supervisor and that placement lead to an elective placement in his practice the following year. That sold me on rural practice.
The path to a political ecology of health: from exposure to Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb in first year medical biology, and Tony McMichael’s book Planetary Overload a few years later.
GHG: Tell us about your work and study in Environmental Health? What inspired you to undertake study in this field?
PT: The logical progression ‘up-stream’ of the primary health care message is: if healthy people are grown in health societies, then healthy societies are founded in a health physical environment, and are dependent totally on a functioning ecosystem. The ‘fountain of health’ is a healthy ecosystem; all else is down stream.
PT: Years of reading in my spare time. Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) conferences are very stimulating. Years of being on the front lines of various peace and social justice and environmental groups. Last year I spend my long service leave undertaking a Masters of Climate Change at ANU, with the Fenner and Crawford schools. There I met Human Ecology as a formal discipline.
GHG: Do you know of other study opportunities in this field?
PT: I don’t formally know of others but the Web is a great place to search. All universities have courses in sustainability, environmental studies of various hues, and some have a human ecology (or similar) unit or department. I have also heard of ecological anthropology. As an undergraduate one might be able to do such a subject as an elective in another subject.
GHG: How has this study (a Masters in Climate Change) impacted on your work?
PT: Increased it! And refocused approaches to clinical issues; I now use a more ecological and system oriented frame to view clinical issues and managements. And of course to really have an effect on society, one has to put in time and effort so I have reduced my clinical time to fit this in.
GHG: Can you tell us about your work as a General Practitioner at Central Australian Aboriginal Congress? What have you enjoyed? What have been your frustrations?
PT: Primary health care at Congress is incredibly diverse and hence fascinating. There are so many programs; we try to roster people to a mix of consulting in the clinic, and in other programs (Alukura, Ingkintja), including some of the outreach programs (Frail Aged and Disabled, Nursing Homes, Bush Mobile, Headspace and so on). Then there is clinical governance and quality improvement ongoing that one can in involved in. Achievements: helping so many young practitioners on their journey into indigenous and rural health.
There is always change but never enough in the direction it needs to go; the path to improvement is a wandering one.
GHG: What advice would you give young health professionals hoping to work in Indigenous Health?
PT: Stick around. Keep your eyes open and mouth usually closed. Read The Spirit Level, and some of Henry Reynolds books. Keep the fire in your belly as a slow combustion stove not a bonfire. Operate across all scales, though not at the same time; play them up and down as needed. Stay grounded in your self and culture, but imbibe deeply of others.
GHG: What’s the most inspiring book you’ve ever read?
PT: David Christian's Maps of Time; Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker; Jared Diamond's Collapse; Jacques Atali's A Brief History of the Future … and lots more!
GHG: What is the greatest crisis we face as a world?
PT: Global environmental change: consequent to Ehrlich’s I=PAT, which is short hand for human Impacts are a function of the population, personal Affluence and the energy and other efficiencies of our Technologies. These are out of our control as a society because governments are failing to protect the global commons. So the root crisis is governments failing to regulate the corporate world. Solution: re-establish democracy at all scales and soon.
GHG: What are your tips for health professionals interested in Environmental Health?
PT: Think sociologically and ecologically; it is a political economy and a political ecological situation not a clinical or even ‘old’ public health one. It is about bringing about social change with is about individual change thugh social marketing, political change through political activism outside of political parties and parliament (who may be the locus of change but they are not the vehicles of it). It is about regulating corporations by reasserting democracy not seeking a benevolent dictator to see us through the crisis.
Dr Peter Tait has been an Australian leader in peace activism, environmental health, and public health. He is a strong advocate for disadvantaged indigenous communities, and has been a mentor for many young health workers. He has been actively engaged with a number of organisations, including the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW), the Australian Conservation Foundation, OxFam and Community Aid Abroad, Greenpeace, Aidwatch, Minerals Policy Institute, Health Skeptics and Medecins Sans Frontiers. In 2007, he was named RACGP General Practitioner of the Year.
To share your experiences with the Global Health Gateway, email mariam@globalhealthgateway.org.au.
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