The former director at Sunrise Health in Katherine has received an Administrator's Medal for her contribution to the fight against eliminating scabies and rheumatic heart disease in the Northern Territory.
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For more than 25 years, her work has seen her promoting health at a grassroots level, travelling door-to-door in remote communities.
Michelle Dowden, the current CEO of One Disease was presented a medal from the Administrator of the Northern Territory Vicki O'Halloran at an official awards ceremony at Government House on Thursday alongside other winners in health care.
"Effective collaboration between individuals and teams working in primary health care in the Northern Territory is particularly important due to the inevitable challenges that remoteness poses to the delivery of high-quality health care," the Northern Territory PHN CEO Nicki Herriot said.
"The medal recipients are all fine examples of how to adopt innovative service delivery models to overcome these challenges.
"It's wonderful to have this annual opportunity to recognise them."
Ms Dowden was commended on her dedicated work on initiatives ranging from infant nutrition strategies to awareness campaigns designed to eliminate scabies and RHD.
Her long-term commitment to primary health care and her breadth of experience within the Northern Territory was also noted.
The other major medal presented at the ceremony - the Team Medal - was awarded to the Care Coordination Team of the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress.
With a heavy focus on involving families in primary health care, the Congress care coordinators were congratulated on always going the extra mile in providing culturally appropriate and safe health and social services to their clients in Central Australia.
"The care coordinators often bring up issues and identify gaps in service provision for their most vulnerable clients," Ms Herriot said.
"For example, appropriate housing is an obvious and long-standing issue for many of the complex and often elderly clients.
"The care coordinators advocate heavily for those clients to ensure that their social needs are met, which is an essential step to improving their health outcomes."
The team at Laynhapuy Homelands Health was also recognised with a medal for their delivery of clinical care across a vast region, often travelling hundreds of kilometres to remote communities.
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