Dr Cathy Vaughan, Class of 1989, grew up in Rokewood just outside of Ballarat. As a teenager she enjoyed school, was good in some subjects but not all and found time to play and umpire netball. Following in both her mother and grandmother’s footsteps, she was enrolled at Sacred Heart and, as a day scholar, journeyed in and out of town on the bus.

The Declaration of the Rights of the Child provides that all children have a right to enjoy special protection, to receive adequate housing and to be protected against all forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation. The Burdekin Report released in the late 1980’s acknowledged that Australia had a real issue with homelessness, especially for teenagers or children. As a teenager living in rural Victoria, Cathy was upset by these facts and volunteered with the Open Family Foundation to try and make a difference. Cathy then took it a step further and got Sacred Heart and St Martin’s involved with the respite centre that had been set up at Ellaine.

This early sense of community-mindedness has been an ongoing theme in Cathy’s life. She has travelled the world, gained an impressive list of academic credentials, accolades and awards but continues to roll up her sleeves to pitch in and help out where she can at the ground level.

As an Australian Volunteer Abroad in the 90’s Cathy travelled to Pakistan and spent 14 months working as a physiotherapist helping those most in need. Upon her return, she worked at the Burnett Institute, an Australian medical research institute that combines medical research in the laboratory and the field with public health action to address major health issues affecting disadvantaged communities in Australia and internationally.

Prior to undertaking a PhD, Cathy worked on youth-focused HIV prevention programs in Papua New Guinea and a number of south-east Asian countries.

Cathy leads research projects working to improve the health of women and to strengthen community-led responses to violence against immigrant and refugee women in Victoria and Tasmania. She has led projects exploring the impact of female genital cutting on women and families in Victoria and is currently involved in research into discriminatory acts against young people with disability; employment outcomes for people with disability; and media representations of violence against women. Cathy coordinates the World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Women’s Health, hosted by the Centre for Health Equity and teaches post-graduate courses on Community-Based Participatory Research, Gender and Health and Women and Global Health.

Global health and development practitioner, writer, researcher, speaker, advocate and investigator, Dr Cathy Vaughan has worked in over twenty low- and middle-income countries in Asia, the Pacific and sub-Saharan Africa. She works at the interface of development practice and theory, building new programs of research focusing on gender and women’s health in settings of poverty and marginalization.

Dr Vaughan is a Senior Lecturer in Gender and Women’s Health in the Centre for Health Equity, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.