Elizabeth Barrett on King's Honours List for work in rural medicine

Perthville resident Elizabeth Barrett was listed as a member of the 2023 King's Birthday Honours List for her significant service to rural and remote medicine.

And what a service she has provided over the last 40 years.

Born on a farm near Lithgow, Dr Barrett has always had rural life in her blood.

So after spending her medical training years in Sydney, she was very eager to get back to the Central West and work in the rural health system.

"Rural life was just part of me," Dr Barrett said.

"Being born on a farm and growing up on a farm, and then being in Sydney for my training years gave me this absolute craving to get back to the bush."

After her initial medical training in Sydney, Dr Barrett moved to Bathurst in her fourth post-graduate year.

She spent time working all around the Central West, doing some amazing work in medicine.

One of Dr Barrett's standout memories is the work she did as part of a hepatitis B research team in remote NSW Aboriginal communities.

The project took place in the mid 1980s, and focused on determining the prevalence of blood markers for hepatitis B in Aboriginal children - from birth to 18 years old.

This involved going to remote communities, taking blood from every child, spinning it down onsite and then the pathologists looking at the blood when the team returned to their base at Dubbo.

It was the findings of this research that was instrumental in the Commonwealth Government incorporating free hepatitis B vaccines into the childhood vaccination schedule.

"It was wonderful because it had such far-reaching implications," Dr Barrett said.

"So it demonstrated a very high prevalence of hepatitis B in Aboriginal children and this was used to then petition the Commonwealth Government to make hepatitis B vaccines free.

"It started out free for Aboriginal children and then gradually got incorporated into the childhood vaccination schedule.

"So that was an incredible thing to be involved in and had huge implications across Australia."

Another initiative that Dr Barrett looks back on fondly is her involvement with a gay support group in Dubbo in the 1980s, when HIV aids become prominent.

Dr Barrett said during this time, the treatment of gay men was "just absolutely shocking", and many were being kicked out of the family home for being gay.

So Dr Barrett and a nurse she worked with started a gay support group in Dubbo, for men who had become homeless due to their sexual preferences.

"They didn't necessarily have HIV AIDS, but they were gay men and so the families just didn't want anything to do with them," she said.

"We had men coming from Cobar and Mudgee, it was quite a big support group and it was absolutely wonderful.

"And we combined sexual health education with the general social support that we'd set up."

During her time based in Dubbo, Dr Barrett also did outreach women's health clinics in remote and rural communities, because there were no female general practitioners (GPs).

She said many women, particularly Aboriginal women, just never saw doctors because they were all males.

So she tried to fill this gap.

In 1988, Dr Barrett returned to Bathurst as the regional director of health, and one of the first things she did was make some changes to the aged care facilities in hospitals.

This is another thing she is proud to have been part of.

"I saw elderly people in dark rooms just lying on beds, never stimulated, with contractures because they weren't moving," Dr Barrett said.

"So that was a big exercise to change the way we were managing aged care in the region.

"That involved getting people out of beds, putting programs in place to stimulate them - socially and physically - so that was another huge thing."

The list of Dr Barrett's incredible achievements and contributions to the NSW health system goes on, which is why she was named a member of the King's Honours List.

But to her, she was just doing what she loved and helping people along the way.

Dr Barrett is very grateful to be recognised under such prestigious circumstances, and thanked everyone who has been part of her journey.

"I was astonished really," she said.

"You never think that you do anything special, you do it because you love it. So it has been overwhelming but at the same time it's been rather wonderful.

"I feel quite overjoyed and I think that joy is partly because it's allowed me to think about the last 40 years and the wonderful people I've worked with.

"Because in healthcare it's all about team work."

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