Medicine graduate Sam Cooper helping to improve the lives of resettled refugees

Sam Cooper receives the Shaun Summers
award from Dr Anthony White from the
School of Clinical Sciences

Being able to make a small yet positive impact to those he encounters is what graduate, Sam Cooper, hopes a career in medicine will bring. Yet, as the recipient of the 2018 Shaun Summers Award for Medical Student Research, Sam has already shown just how much of an impact he is making – especially to the lives of refugee families in Australia.

In 2017, Sam undertook a Bachelor of Medical Science (Honours) degree, a twelve-month program for medical students and graduates that embeds them in a research setting and introduces them to research practice. Sam’s research area, psychiatric epidemiology, specifically explored mental health in recently resettled humanitarian migrant populations in Australia. Under the supervision of Dr Joanne Enticott and Professor Graham Meadows from the School of Clinical Sciences, his research involved secondary data analysis of a large longitudinal study examining the first three years of resettlement for refugee populations living in Australia.

Sam went on to achieve the highest grade in the BMedSc(Hons) for his thesis Post-Migration Determinants of Mental Health in Refugee and Asylum Seeker Populations, which saw him awarded the Shaun Summers Award — named in honour of Dr Shaun Summers, an inspiring young clinical academic who shone brilliantly as a doctor, scientist, and teacher in the Department of Medicine.

After reading the high calibre research outputs of his peers, Sam says he feels honoured and humbled to receive the award, and is extremely grateful to those who made it possible. “My research only exists because of the generosity of recently resettled refugee populations who may have had incredibly difficult migration experiences pre and post-resettlement in Australia. I thank these families for their participation in the original study and their contribution to Australia generally.”

While there is some government funding to allow research, such as Sam’s, into mental health of resettled refugee populations, he believes there is a callous disregard for the mental health of individuals currently detained in offshore detention. “The deleterious effects to mental and physical health of being stranded in the existential limbo that is offshore processing are inconceivable. For individuals seeking asylum, time in Australian offshore processing is a cruel and unusual punishment that continues to this day.”

Currently working as a medical intern at Eastern Health, Sam see his future in either Psychiatry or General Practice, “My fascination with people and wanting to continually learn from my patients, I think, is well suited to these specialities.” For now, he hopes to have his research published to allow others greater insight into the detrimental effects of offshore processing; so that better care can be afforded to humanitarian migrant populations.