VILLAGE PUMP
The Samford Progress Association’s free community newspaper printed continuously since 1977.
The
@TheVillagePumpSamford
“Your Community Newspaper, owned by the Samford Community and produced for the benefit of the Samford Community.” 20 JANUARY, 2023
P: 0477 663 696
E: editor@villagepump.org.au NEXT DEADLINE THURSDAY 26/01/2023
DR GARY ALLEN: ENABLED Towards the end of 2022, Samford resident Dr Gary Allen received a Citizen Research Impact Award from the Hopkins Centre, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University, in recognition of his tireless advocacy for people with disability and the life-changing initiatives he has led in the university, state, and nation, as well as internationally. Dr Allen lives with progressive Multiple Sclerosis and this is one of many awards this passionate campaigner for employment retention, access and inclusion for those with visible and invisible disabilities, has received. Gary was diagnosed with MS in 2000, becoming wheelchair mobile in 2007. He was the first person in the world to receive the Pender/Khanna Immunotherapy treatment for MS, which helped alleviate much of his pain until research funding ran out. He is committed to helping find a cure for MS. His doctorate on positive institutional research ethics arrangements was given an Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award from the Queensland University of Technology. He is now the Managing Director and Senior Consultant of the Australian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services (ahrecs.com) as
well as the full-time Senior Policy Officer in the Griffith University Office for Research. Gary works on many state and national committees advocating for the disabled. The policies and guidelines he and his teams have developed for how the disabled are to be included in educational settings and in the workforce are changing society’s perception of “disabled” to “enabled” and contributing to developing our laws. As a volunteer, Gary, with his family’s support, has raised thousands of dollars for MS Queensland and is an honorary
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ambassador for the organisation. For twenty-three years he has been an advisor and educator for the National Health and Medical Research Centre. In Samford, he and fellow advocate for the disabled, Col Chandler, set up a support group for those with MS. When asked what his greatest achievements have been, he said he and his wife have raised a “thoughtful, sensitive and socially responsible” son. He is proud of his academic and work achievements and especially proud of being a founding member and CEO of Enabled.vip. As part of his passion to help those with visible and invisible disabilities become small business entrepreneurs, allowing them to work around their challenges, Dr Allen has established this virtual business incubator to help them develop business expertise. While people like Australian of the Year, Dylan Alcott, have openly proved how able the disabled can be, challenging societal prejudices, Dr Gary Allen quietly affects national, state and company policy and the laws on how people are treated. He is enabled in a different way. “Any rush to judge a book by its cover is bound to be flawed,” he said. Julie Martin