Staff

A/Prof Mitchell Anjou is an optometrist and public health practitioner whose motivating professional interest is the provision of eye care for people who have difficulty realising care. Mitchell is a Senior Research Fellow, Academic Specialist in the Indigenous Eye Health group. After completing his optometry and research masters degrees, he worked for the Australian/Victorian College of Optometry for over twenty years as Clinic Director and Senior Fellow in the Optometry Department of the University of Melbourne.

Mitchell served for over 10 years on the Optometrist Registration Board of Victoria and is now an appointed member of the Registration and Notifications Committee of the Optometry Board of Australia. He is a Fellow of the Australian College of Optometry, founding member of the Public Health Optometry Group, Director of the Optometry Council of Australia and New Zealand and was honoured in 2013 as a Member in the Order of Australia award for significant service to optometry and public health.

Kylie is a proud Gunditjmara, Wotjobaluk, Ngarrindjeri and Muandik woman who lives on Wadawurrung Country, Geelong. She has led community engagement initiatives in education, the arts and in health & wellbeing spaces and pathways for mob.

Inspired to contribute to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander eye health and to a growing workforce of mob in eye care, Kylie connected with IEHU in 2020. She has since co-created spaces for young fullas to yarn with Aboriginal eye health leaders and is now on board to lead the ‘A Place for Mob and a Place for Me in Optometry’ pathways project.

Guy Gillor is an Academic Specialist: Indigenous Eye Health Policy and Practice (Senior Research Fellow) at Indigenous Eye Health Unit, University of Melbourne. Guy 's work focuses on equity and self-determination in health, health systems reform, policy and advocacy. Prior to joining the Unit in 2019, Guy worked with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCO) and the Aboriginal Medical Service Western Sydney among other roles. Guy holds a PhD from the University of Western Sydney, his dissertation traces the early history of the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services movement in Australia. Before moving to Australia in 2007, Guy worked for Physicians for Human Rights in his native Palestine/Israel, advocating for equitable access to health services.

Nick is a Ngarrindjeri man and is originally from South Australia. Nick has been working in Indigenous health for 10 years and started his career working at an Aboriginal community-controlled health organisation in South Australia.

Nick Wilson joined the IEHU in 2018 in the role of Marketing & Communications Officer. In 2021 he transitioned to the role of Trachoma Program Manager.

Nick’s current role involves engaging a broad range of stakeholders to advance activities and efforts to Close the Gap for Vision – with a particular focus on the elimination of trachoma in Australia by 2022.

Walter Bathern is an Aboriginal man who has been living and working in the Alice Springs region his whole life.

Walter joined IEHU in 2020 as Trachoma Community Engagement Officer. Walter has extensive experience in community engagement and consultation, previously working as a Parks & Wildlife Indigenous Ranger and also as an Intensive Case Manager at NAAJA Through care supporting and identifying the needs of clients in correction services, so they can enter back into the community. Walter also speaks and understands a number of the Central and Barkly region languages such as Arrernte, Luritja and Pitjantjatjara.

Rachael Ferguson has a Diploma of Arts - Applied Photography, Certificate in Vocational Photography and in 2019 Rachael completed her Certificate IV in Digital Design.

Rachael has a keen interest in health promotion and social media/marketing. Rachael's work at the IEHU involves creating and developing high quality and engaging resources used for social media campaigns, presentations, posters, reports, brochures, flipcharts and other online and  printed media environments. In 2021 Rachael transitioned to the role of Communications Officer.

Fiona Lange has over 20 years’ experience in health promotion and social marketing, and 13 of these at the Indigenous Eye Health Unit Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, working to eliminate blinding trachoma as a public health problem in Australia. Fiona is skilled in developing health promotion resources with trachoma stakeholders and Aboriginal communities. Her work has a strong emphasis on engaging and maintaining excellent working relationships at all levels. Fiona is committed to strengthening and supporting innovative pathways for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership in public health. She is optimistic that long term intersectoral collaborations and partnerships will lead to the sustainable elimination of trachoma in Australia in the next few years.

Lesley Martin is a Central Australian Arrernte Woman by decent, Lore & Culture.

Carol Wynne commenced in the role of Translation Research Scholar with the Indigenous Eye Health Unit (IEHU) at the University of Melbourne in 2014. Carol's has over 10 years experience working in Aboriginal health in the Northern Territory and Victoria – with a particular focus on grassroots level community development and health promotion. She has also worked for local government, and various NGOs, in Ireland, South East Asia, Mongolia and Africa. Carol has a strong interest in public health and completed her MPH at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2005. In her role with IEHU, Carol is working with the IEHU team to support regional implementation of the Roadmap to Close the Gap for Vision across Australia.

Melbourne Laureate Professor Emeritus Hugh Taylor has retired from being the head of IEHU in 2022 which he started in 2008. Between 2000 and 2008 he was Head of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Melbourne and the Founding Director of the Centre for Eye Research Australia. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Institute at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore with joint appointments in the Departments of Epidemiology and International Health.

Professor Taylor's research interests include blindness prevention strategies, infectious causes of blindness and the development of health policy. His current work particularly focuses on Aboriginal eye health and the elimination of trachoma. Professor Taylor has written 30 books and reports including a book on trachoma, and more than 700 scientific papers. He has received multiple international awards and prizes. In 2001, he was made a Companion in the Order of Australia. He has been President of the International Council of Ophthalmology, Vice President of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, and Chairman of Vision 2020 Australia.

Associate Professor Kristopher Rallah-Baker is a specialist ophthalmologist based on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.

Inspired by his mother, who was one of Australia’s first Indigenous health workers, and then by the work of Fred Hollows, Kris completed his undergraduate Medical Degree at the University of Newcastle, followed by specialist ophthalmology training with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists and was offered a Fred Hollows Foundation Fellowship in 2017. Kris spent time working closely with Indigenous populations in Alice Springs, as well as time overseas in the Pacific Islands.

Kris is Australia’s first and currently only Indigenous ophthalmologist. He was the founding member of the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association and immediate ex-President, former AMA Federal Councillor, Director on the Federal Board of the Royal Flying Doctors Service, technical advisor to the Fred Hollows Foundation and Chair of the Vision2020 Indigenous Committee.

His ophthalmic interests include cataract, glaucoma, diabetic eye disease, and diagnosis and treatment of macular degeneration.

Kris join IEHU in 2020 as an honorary staff member, providing technical and practical guidance to the Indigenous Eye Health Unit .