Meet the Team
Meet the Team
The Wurru Wurru Health Unit consists of both Academic and Professional staff.
Academic Staff
Dr Ngaree Blow
MD/MPH, DCH, BSc Director, Wurru Wurru Health Unit
Dr Ngaree Blow is a Quandamooka (Noonuccal Nation), Goreng-Goreng and Yorta-Yorta woman currently completing her advanced training as a Public Health Physician. She works as the Director of the Wurru Wurru Health Unit (First Nations Health) for medical education at the University of Melbourne as well as dedicating part of her time to consulting on public health projects.
Ngaree has worked in various medical and public health roles, including as lead medical officier for the COVID-19 outbreak response in 2020-21 and in the COVID-19 Vaccination program in 2022 with the Department of Health, Victoria. She has also established the first all First Nations led and run music health festivals – ‘It’s a Mob Thing’ across Victoria in 2022.
Dr Blow was most recently recognised for her work in 2022 when awarded the MDHS Award for Excellence in Indigenous Health Engagement, as well as the Australasian Faculty of Public health Medicine (AFPHM) Victorian Gerry Murphy Prize in 2020 and was named one of 2019’s Australian Financial Review’s ‘100 Women of Influence’. Dr Blow was also a current member and previous board member of the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association (AIDA) and has been involved in many First Nations health, research and education roles and committees.
Twitter: @DrNgaree
Madelyne Hudson-Buhagiar
MPsych (Clinical), BA (Hons), Lecturer
Madelyne is a Wiradjuri person living and working on Wurundjeri Country. Madelyne is a Clinical Psychologist working at the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service (VAHS) and draws upon this in her role as a lecturer in the Wurru Wurru Health Unit at the University of Melbourne in the Department of Medical Education. Madelyne is committed to providing First Nations health teaching to medical students as part of developing a culturally safe workforce. In her clinical role, Madelyne provides psychological support to adult members of the Victorian Aboriginal community. She is passionate about providing culturally grounded therapy, Indigenising mental health support and reducing barriers to accessing high quality mental health support.
Tyson Holloway-Clarke
Tyson Holloway-Clarke is a Njamal man, educator and researcher and is currently an Associate Lecturer with the Wurru Wurru Health Team. As a student at the University of Melbourne, Tyson graduated from a Bachelor of Arts with an Honours in History and a Juris Doctor. In 2022 he started his PhD on legal research methods and Indigenous jurisprudence.
Simultaneous to his full time studies, Tyson also has also been tutoring with the University since 2015 as an ITAS tutor, and since 2020 as a sessional tutor and subject coordinator for the Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Teaching. Within medical education, Tyson has also been a team member within the Wurru Wurru team since the start\ of 2020 as a casual tutor. Now as Associate Lecturer Tyson brings depth to the team’s historic and legal perspectives and extensive tutoring experience.
Outside of University life, Tyson has many varied interests and pursuits. From martial arts, to boardgames, to the outdoors, to music and cinema, Tyson has plenty of distractions.
Avanah Brettschneider
I’m Avanah Brettschneider and I am a proud Ngiyampaa woman, and my people stretch as far as Lake mungo to Cobar across to Gilgandra in New South Wales. I grew up in a small town called Hay on Wiradjuri country then later my family relocated to Echuca on Yorta-Yorta country. I relocated to Wurundjeri country in September 2021 to join the Melbourne Indigenous Professional Employment Program (MIPEP) and complete my Diploma of Business. During my first year of the program, I worked as an Administrative Officer for Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity which is a fellowship for Indigenous social equity in Australia, Aotearoa and the Pacific region. I then moved on to the department of Paediatrics at the Royal Children’s Hospital for my second rotation, but found it wasn’t the right fit for me. I then got the opportunity to work for the Wurru Wurru Health Unit as an Administration assistant /Project officer and I am beyond excited to be a part of this deadly team.
Nicolle Maganga
Nicolle Maganga holds a PhD in Public Administration obtained at the Durban University of Technology in South Africa. She is an individual with extensive experience in higher education, curriculum development and university community engagement research. Prior to moving to Australia, she worked in the higher education space in South Africa. Most recently, she has worked within the curriculum development space with her focus on the development and inclusion of cultural safety in the curriculum in her previous role as Curriculum Development Specialist at RANZCOG.
Nicolle’s main interests are in understanding the different dynamics in curriculum and global education as seen in the work in The Bloomsbury handbook of Global Education.
Todd J. Bennett
Todd (TJ) has a professional background in both Education and Health. Having completed an undergraduate double degree in Social Science (Psychology) and Education, they have worked in both Secondary and Tertiary education sectors while providing consultation as an active member of the Goulburn region’s Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) and as an executive member of Mulwaree Aboriginal Community Incorporated (MACI). Through these community roles they were appointed as an Aboriginal Liaison Officer (ALO) serving within the Goulburn region.
Now working with the Wurru Wurru Health Team, Todd is concurrently studying their Masters in Music Research (Interactive Composition). The recipient of the Wilin Scholarship and the Melbourne Indigenous Merit Scholarship, their research agenda utilises autoethnographic methodology centralised around Indigenous Knowledges of a spiritual nature that one would normally need to be initiated into. As an emerging artist, Todd imbues compositions with this knowledge in order to create musical tools for Indigenous education and wellbeing with their most recent composition being performed at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM).
Wurru Wurru Health Tutors
The academics at the Wurru Wurru Health Unit support up to 20 casual First Nations tutors to provide a diverse range of First Nations voices into the curriculum of Doctor of Medicine (MD) and across multiple health disciplines within the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences (MDHS).