SPRING UPDATE 2018
Australian Rotary Health Districts of Australia
Research
Scholarships
Education
Awareness
Chairman’s Report NONE OF US IS IMMUNE!
Gregory Ross
In the many addresses given at Rotary conferences and clubs, I often highlight the staggering statistics about mental illness and how its effects can reach all of us. None of us is immune, as I have found only too sadly in the last few months.
My musician son Simon recently had a baby boy with a 37 year old doctor in Amsterdam. When Toby was only three months old, his mother jumped from the roof of a building and ended her life. My family here in Australia flew to Amsterdam to support Simon and her heartbroken parents and siblings. Fast forward two months and my daughter Sophie, a constantly working professional stage actor, withdrew from her commitments with the Melbourne Theatre Company and flew to Amsterdam to become Toby’s mother. It’s an amazing sacrifice and I am very proud of her for making little Toby her priority. With the full support of the late doctor’s parents and siblings, and how special that family is, Simon and Sophie brought Toby to Melbourne in August where he will be raised and educated. They will take him back to Amsterdam for two to three months each year. Toby is a happy, healthy little boy as typically seen in this photo.
Tragically in Australia during the 1980s, parents found some 500 babies a year lifeless in their cots. Professor Terry Dwyer’s research into sudden infant death syndrome at the University of Hobart, recruiting 10,000 babies to the Rotary funded study, brought outstanding results. Within a decade the number of infant deaths reduced by approximately 80%. Terry is currently Professor of Epidemiology at Oxford University but his cot death research remains one of the most successful research outcomes in the world. How lucky were we to have that as our first ARH project. These days the far greater challenge facing our society centres around mental health. When looking at the numbers of Australians currently diagnosed with a mental illness, the statistics are overwhelming. For any adult not to be affected personally, either through their own situation or through exposure to family members and friends who are suffering, would be a rare stroke of fortune. I am extremely privileged as a long-time Rotarian to currently Chair a program that is doing so much good. ARH with its Lift the Lid on Mental Illness campaign is something in which all Rotarians should be proud and celebrate. It may be helpful for those reading this newsletter to be reminded of the way we operate financially. We are able to spend 100% of club donated funds to research; in fact we often give more. That is possible because those business Rotarians who drove ARH in its early days decided to create and build a corpus. From this the interest earned now covers the costs of running the organisation.
Toby
The Zone Institute/Australia New Zealand Rotary Conference 2018 was held in Hobart in September and this prompted me to reflect that our initial research took place in this beautiful southern Australian city. In an effort to tackle the trauma of cot death, and following the Rotary Club of Mornington’s proposal, Australian Rotary Health Research Fund was created. With Past RI President Royce Abbey in the Chair, the fund received national and RI support and became the first home grown national Rotary program.
We have an investment fund of $14 million currently. From this the seven staff, volunteer directors and research committee expenses plus other costs such as advertising and PR are covered by the interest earned. Having the corpus provides great stability, as seen by ARH surviving the recent global financial crisis so well. We invest our funds conservatively through Unica Wealth, a Hobart based financial investment enterprise, with whom we have developed a strong relationship. For those who may question this strategy, an alternative could be to spend everything now on research and then survive year to year Continued page 2
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