The Launceston Clinical School (LCS) Community Engagement Committee serves as an advisory and liaison body between the University of Tasmania School of Medicine, the LCS, and the northern Tasmanian community it serves.
Purpose
- Provide strategic advice, guidance, and oversight on program delivery, community partnerships, community participation in research, engagement initiatives, outreach, and the social accountability of the Launceston Clinical School to the northern Tasmanian community
- Foster relationships between the Launceston Clinical School and its surrounding communities to ensure mutual benefit, respect, and responsiveness to community needs while improving health outcomes and health service delivery through effective and meaningful community engagement
Principles
We’re proud to be guided by strong principles that shape our decisions and drive integrity.
Codesign
The Committee is based on a combination of professional or academic expertise and lived experience that enables authentic, informed community engagement and partnership.
Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity
Via embedded inclusion, a culture of safety and wellbeing for all removes barriers to help seeking and healthcare delivery while addressing areas of underrepresentation and systemic disadvantage.
Involvement
Community members engage in matters relating to their health, wellbeing, and welfare, including in the shaping of future professionals who deliver that healthcare in northern Tasmania.
Partnership
Working relationships between the Committee and our Community partners are transparent and accountable, and centred on open communication and shared goals.
Continuous Improvement
Ongoing assessment enhances our focus on improved patient and community healthcare outcomes to enhance processes and foster a culture of involvement.
Membership
The Community Engagement Committee (CEC) has core members and can co-opt additional members based on their expertise as needed.
- Provide input from their area of expertise, perspective, or experiences
- Recommend and/or foster partnerships
- Join subcommittees or participate in engagement opportunities
- Share relevant information with their networks
- Champion community engagement via the Community Engagement Committee within their own personal and professional networks
Current members
Director, Launceston Clinical School (LCS)
Chair Community Engagement Committee
A previous graduate of the UTAS School of Medicine, Dr Rohan Church is an emergency physician and medical educator based in Launceston. Rohan has worked in several medical education roles across UTAS, and since 2025 has been the Director of the Launceston Clinical School, overseeing the undergraduate medical education for students across all five years of the Medicine program.
Rohan is passionate about instilling medical graduates with skills in advocacy and leadership to enable them to positively influence social and environmental determinants of health and contribute to be accountable to the populations whom they will serve as future doctors.
Lecturer, Launceston Clinical School (LCS)
Academic Representative - CEC
Dr Tamara Reynish delivers psychology and health & society content at UTAS, Launceston Clinical School (LCS) and coordinates their simulated patient program.
She is the founder and an academic member of the LCS Community Engagement Committee. During her PhD in Public Health, she examined the psychological health of underserved populations in rural Australia and their use and assessment of mental, physical, and sexual healthcare services and practitioners.
She also has extensive professional experience as a mental health practitioner and clinical supervisor – all underpinned by a trauma informed and intersectional feminist framework.
Project Lead, Patient Experience and Community Engagement, Royal Melbourne Hospital
CEC Member
Jenny is proud to have called Launceston home with her family for over a decade. In that time she led Launceston Clinical School’s Patient Partner Program and in doing so developed strong community ties in Tasmania. Jenny’s passion as a Registered Nurse is to foster greater partnership in healthcare, ensuring that trust, quality and safety are achieved for equitable person-centred care.
Her current work at Royal Melbourne Hospital in the Community Engagement and Patient Experience team, leads the Person-Centred Value-Based Health Care project across the organisation. Interests in relational care, professionalism and community engagement extend to work in medical regulation as member of the Victorian Board of the Medical Board of Australia, regional health service Board governance in Victoria, and Postgraduate Medical Council of Victoria hospital training accreditation. Jenny’s research focus in her PhD is empowerment of patients living with multimorbidity for collaborative decision-making.
Solicitor / Policy Officer
CEC Member
Elise Whitmore is a lawyer with 16 years' experience working across family law, family violence, discrimination, and sexual harassment. Her practice has focused on supporting people navigating complex legal systems, particularly in matters involving safety, power imbalances, and institutional accountability in addition to her legal practice at Launceston Community Legal Centre. She also currently works as a policy officer in the sexual violence sector, contributing to legal and policy reform aimed at strengthening system responses and improving outcomes for victim-survivors.
Her work is informed by feminist principles and a strong commitment to gender equity, integrity, and fairness, with a focus on ensuring that legal frameworks operate in ways that are both just and responsive to the lived realities of those affected by violence and discrimination.
CEO, OMGLConsulting
CEC Member
Oliver Macdonald Garden-Leaver is a proud LGBTQI+ Romanichals & Pavee, through their Queer dad Andysue/Susan’s, grandmother Elsie 'Nancy' Rose Leaver. Susan lived with unsupported schizophrenia, sleeping rough on and off the streets of Launceston for 20+ years. Drawing on Susan's/their own lived experiences of homelessness, they’ve been advocating as a community representative on the Launceston City Council's Homelessness Advisory Committee since 2023.
As a qualified environmental architectural draftsman and environmental town/rural planner, Oliver is researching Healthy Country climate change adaptive land use planning as a mechanism for housed/nomadic lifeworlds as essential healthcare approaches to watershed scale cultivation of a post-industrial healthy human gut microbiome in medium density cityscapes.
Medical Director, Primary Health North
President, LGH Medical Staff Association
CEC Member
Dr Brooke Sheldon is a GP and medical administrator with a background in medical education. She works at the Tasmanian Health Service as the Medical Director of Primary Health North.
With interests in professionalism, regulation and quality improvement, she is Chair of the Tasmanian Board of the Medical Board of Australia and President of the Launceston General Hospital’s Medical Staff Association.
Brooke is passionate about fostering competent, well-supported medical trainees and improving medical culture. She chairs the annual Medical Training Survey, a tool for evaluating these factors for doctors in training across Australia.
Malachie Smedley is a senior medical student at the UTAS Launceston Clinical School (LCS) and a student member of the Community Engagement Committee.
Raised in Northern Tasmania, he has developed a strong understanding of the need for a collaborative relationship between LCS and the Northern Tasmanian community to improve health outcomes and wellness especially in regional and rural areas of the state.
Having studied in both Hobart and Launceston, Malachie brings a firsthand perspective of the challenges and opportunities experienced by Tasmanian students pursuing a medical degree.
4th Year Medical Student LCS
CEC Student Member
Yashvi Parmar is a fourth-year medical student at the Launceston Clinical School and a student member of the CEC.
Her interest in community engagement and health equity is shaped by local and international experiences, including work with the Rotary Foundation in India, which have fostered a commitment to equity, collaboration, and a desire to contribute meaningfully to the communities she serves as a medical student and future doctor.
Within the medical school, she is involved in student leadership and advocacy, including roles on the Medicine Course Wellbeing Committee, Year-level Committees, and as an academic mentor. She is also engaged with IMPACT, contributing to student-led projects addressing health needs in underserved populations. Yashvi is currently researching early detection approaches as part of the Tasmanian Parkinson’s Project team.
I joined the University of Tasmania's Medical School Launceston in 2024 to help with the transformation of the curriculum from a MBBS to a MD program. I have particular responsibility for the development and implementation of research projects as part of this transformation.
My own research works across community engagement theory and practice, health and health care, and the history and heritage of medicine, women and gender.
I am particularly interested in the interactions between medicine and society, examining the changing nature of medicine and its practice over time.
This incorporates both practitioners and patients, as well as the ‘spatial’, locating both the sites of medical practice and the influences of place for people.
Jane Carlson is the Executive Manager – Specialised Services at Migrant Resource Centre Tasmania. Jane holds a Bachelor of Social Work and has over 30 years experience in managing and delivering services to people in Tasmania, including accommodation and homelessness, disability, mental health, children and families, and aged-care services.
Jane is passionate about supporting professionals and agencies capability to respond to the needs of diverse groups, and in her current role this focus is on the needs of people from refugee and migrant backgrounds and to strengthen the cultural capability and responsiveness of the service system.
Bridie has called Launceston, Tasmania home for nearly 10 years, after relocating from Queensland where she raised her family. With experience across hospitals, aged care, community services, and youth mental health, she brings a strong commitment to person-centred, human rights-based practice.
Bridie holds an academic background in Dementia Care and Social Work and currently works as the Clinical Educator at headspace Launceston. She values lifelong learning and believes individuals are the experts in their own lives.
Grounded in a compassion-focused approach, Bridie prioritises deep listening and empathy in both her professional work and everyday interactions within the community.
Sienna Palser is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Tasmania, currently undertaking clinical training at the Launceston Clinical School after completing her first three years in Hobart.
Alongside her medical studies, Sienna is actively involved in research, contributing to a clinical audit examining Medical Emergency Team (MET) calls in the emergency department at the Royal Hobart Hospital.
She has a particular interest in acute care and clinical quality improvement, with a focus on enhancing patient outcomes through evidence-based practice and multidisciplinary collaboration.
Chief Executive Officer, Clifford Craig Health Foundation
CEC Member
Calling Launceston home for most of her life, Vanessa is a driven and accomplished leader with significant experience in public relations, communications and project management. This includes Executive Officer for Cityprom, Marketing and Fundraising Manager at Launceston City Mission, and an Adviser to the Department of Premier and Cabinet.
Most recently she served as Program Manager for the Launceston City Deal, with the Office of the Coordinator-General. Vanessa joined Clifford Craig Health Foundation as CEO in March 2024. She also serves as Board Director of Launceston Chamber of Commerce.
Juma Hillary Piri Piri worked at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya as an IRC nutrition assistant and UNHCR interpreter. Currently, the Clinical Lead with Adult and Older Persons Community Mental Health Services North Tasmania, Managing Director of Re.Connect Support Services, and CEO of Piri Piri Marketing Hub.
A social worker, field educator, and Authorised Officer under the Tasmanian Mental Health Act 2013, he served on the FECCA New and Emerging Communities Advisory Committee from 2018 to 2022 and was inaugural Chairperson of the Refugee Communities Association of Australia from 2019 to 2022.
His awards include the Victorian Multicultural Excellence Award 2021 and the Heather and Christopher Chong Outstanding Achiever Award 2021.
He is a graduate of the Tasmanian Leaders Program.
Engage with us
Some of our members engage with the Launceston Clinical School. This includes:
- Evaluate and support quality improvement of existing program delivery, including the Patient Partner Program (opens in a new window) and related patient-focussed educational activities
- Evaluate and support quality improvement for existing community engagement activities, such as Teddy Bear Hospital and AgFest
- Evaluate existing student placement opportunities and seeking opportunities for expansion
- Provide input to research activities (including student professional projects) with a focus on alignment with community needs and expectations
- Map community involvement across the curriculum and the faculty
How do we choose our partners?
- deliver mutually beneficial outcomes
- build on shared values and goals
- enable reciprocal knowledge and opportunity exchange
Our partners
Our community partners ensure mutual benefit, respect, and responsiveness to local community needs while improving health outcomes and health service delivery.
These partners address the need for a qualified, medical workforce by offering placement opportunities, research support, partnership with engagement initiatives and outreach, and accountability to the northern Tasmanian community.
-
A confidential, free legal service that helps Tasmanian women with legal issues related to family violence, family law, and child safety.
-
Rural Youth is a membership based organisation that focuses on friends, fun, training and travel with a wide range of opportunities and experiences available.
-
Mission Health is a drop in nurse-practitioner-led health service providing free, compassionate health care to people experiencing homelessness and barriers to care.
-
Engender provides trauma-informed counselling, education, and systems reform supporting young people and adults affected by intimate partner violence.
-
Free counselling, support, and health information to help Tasmanians make active choices in their health.
-
Provides mental health, settlement, aged care, and targeted accommodation services to people from refugee and migrant backgrounds
-
headspace provides early intervention mental health services to young people aged 12-25. headspace can also assist with physical and sexual health, work, study, and alcohol and other drugs.
-
The Clifford Craig Health Foundation is a leading local health promotion charity dedicated to supporting positive health outcomes for the communities of North and North-West Tasmania through research and enhancing patient care.
-
Providing support for LGBTIQA+ Tasmanians as well as education and capacity building for schools, workplaces, government and non-government organisations.
-
The peak independent voice for health consumers in Tasmania, advocating for quality, equitable healthcare and empowering patients, carers and communities to shape health policy, services and system improvement.
Expression of Interest
To get involved with the Community Engagement Committee, please complete our Expression of Interest form (opens in a new window).
Contact us
For more information about the Community Engagement Committee or to learn how you can become a member or partner, contact us.
Address
Level 2, 41 Frankland Street
Northern Integrated Care Services
Launceston, Tasmania, 7250
