Adjunct Professor Janine Mohamed
2019 Cohort
Janine is developing The International Alliance of First Nations Nurses, connecting and fostering their sense of resilience and mutual commitment to increase recognition, value and voice of First Nations nurses at an international level.
Janine is a proud Narrunga Kaurna woman from South Australia who is based in Melbourne (Bunurong and Wurundjeri Country). Over the past 20 years, Janine has worked in nursing, management, project management, research, and workforce and health policy in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health sector. Many of these years have been spent in the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health sector at state, national and international levels. This includes the Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia, the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives, where she was the CEO from 2013-2018.
Janine is focused on:
Advocating and supporting the implementation of cultural safety across health systems and organisations
Thought leadership and support for knowledge translation of the cultural determinants of health
Advocating for understanding of the impacts of climate change on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health action at local, national, and international levels and action to address these impacts
Promoting the importance of Indigenous data sovereignty and governance
Janine is currently the CEO of the Lowitja Institute – Australia’s National Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research – whose vision is to be an authoritative and collective voice for the benefit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ health and wellbeing. The Lowitja Institute is Australia’s only national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community Controlled Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research, named in honour of our Patron, Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue AC CBE DSG. They are an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisation working for the health and wellbeing of Australia’s First Peoples through high impact quality research, knowledge translation, and by supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health researchers.
Janine was awarded a Doctorate of Nursing honoris causa by Edith Cowan University in January 2020, and in 2021, was awarded a Distinguished Fellowship by The George Institute for Global Health Australia and became an Adjunct Professor with the University of South Australia. She is a regular spokesperson on key topics in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health, such as cultural safety, the social and cultural determinants of health, workforce and Indigenous data sovereignty.
Social change work
The core focus of Janine's social change project was cultural safety. It has three components:
Developed, piloted and evaluated an ‘Allyship and cultural safety’ online connected training program for non-Indigenous people in research and higher education sectors in partnership with another Atlantic Fellow and two non-Indigenous colleagues (completed)
Developing and publishing a national discussion paper on embedding cultural safety across the health, research and higher education sector (ongoing)
Develop, pilot and evaluate an ‘Allyship and cultural safety’ an online connected training program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the research and higher education sector (pending funding availability)