Hi there,

I’m Andrew Block. Perhaps unusually for a medical practitioner, I started life in quite a different guise.

I had a career in sales and marketing and was travelling through Kathmandu 20 years ago when I had an epiphany about wanting to help people more. I came back and repeated VCE at night school and entered medicine as a mature-aged student.

Those early experiences are where I learnt the importance of “a story” – my story, patient’s stories, refugees and asylum seekers stories, Monash Health’s story. I actually think this is a new way in health as I feel like we have developed antibodies to data alone!

These days, I’m Associate Professor Block, an Infectious Diseases and general physician who currently works across several roles across both Monash Health and Monash University, including:

– Senior Consultant Physician (General Medicine and Infectious diseases)

– Director of General Medicine and the Monash Refugee Health and Wellbeing service (Dandenong Hospital)

– Chair, Personal and Professional Development for the MBBS undergraduate curriculum (Monash University)

I have held National Advisory Council roles for Refugee and Asylum Seeker issues, and was a contributor to the recent Royal Australasian College of Physicians position statement on Refugee and Asylum Seeker health.

My main professional interests centre on refugee health and wellbeing. I founded and lead the ‘Hands on Health program’ to increase refugee tertiary education participation with Monash University. We were delighted when this received the 2010 Vice Chancellor’s Social Inclusion award. I also developed the National Registrar Professional Development programs, currently running nationally. This work has culminated in the establishment of the Monash Refugee Health and Wellbeing service which has the mission From Surviving to Thriving. Thanks to strong support from Chief Executive Shelly Park, we are providing a holistic service for some of our community’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged.

Its models of care, with the recent focus on social inclusion and community-building programs are some of Australia’s most innovative. They focus on the transition of refugees and asylum seekers from survival of the journey to Australia, to becoming members of our community, and then able to achieve their full potential. (There’s those stories again!)

One of the best aspects of working with refugees and asylum seekers – apart from the fulfilment from addressing inequity – is the opportunity to innovate with a whole population, not just a specific disease or organ system. Refugee health flies under the radar as it isn’t an established discipline. We have an opportunity to test radical and innovative ways of delivering health care in some of the most challenging circumstances. Health is so much more than the absence of disease, as meaningful connection and purpose is integral to recovery – hence the importance of our social and community inclusion programs. The lessons we are learning with refugees can be applied to the broader health system.

As I said, one of the best ways to gauge if we are on track is through patient’s stories. Instead of a helicopter view of the service components, we take a ride with the patient and see how many bumps there are along the way. A larger challenge is defining the value we are creating in health, and measuring these outcomes, which is so much more than the simple counting of services delivered. Once we build this into our everyday business, we will be well on our way to sustainable and cost-effective improvements in health and well-being.

The story of Abdul Razzaq – who met with the Health Minister the Hon Jill Hennessy and Shelly Park recently – captures the essence of our service mission. Click here to find out more.