Monique Bareham is the Chair of Wounds Australia's Consumer Advisory Group (CAG). Members of the CAG have a key role in shaping Be Wound Aware: our national campaign to raise awareness of chronic wounds, their risks and treatments, and the care they need.

Despite chronic wounds being common with an impact on the healthcare system of billions of dollars annually, market research suggests only half of Australians would recognise a recurring wound as a chronic condition. This gap in awareness creates a huge opportunity to improve care through education.

Our CAG helps Wounds Australia communicate with different communities in Australia, recommend themes for wound awareness, review content, and promote the campaign.

Monique is a long-term advocate for people living with lymphoedema itself a condition often intimately relate with chronic wounds). In 2022 Monique was awarded the title of 2022 Australian of the Year (South Australian Local Hero) and the prestigious 2022 Joy Noble Medal. Beyond advocacy, she's a multi-faceted individual with a history that laid a clear path to her current work – read on to learn more.

About Monique: A lifetime's focus on "opening the doors for people coming behind you."

Monique's professional and personal paths through life have often been strongly connected. Early in her career, she put her background as an orchestral musician (specialising in tuned percussion – think xylophones and glockenspiels) to use as a history and music teacher. For eight years she worked as a teacher in the UK before returning to Australia to a role at Medicare. She began "as basically a team coach and leader" before moving into managing service quality. There, she analysed data to find areas of improvement for policy and translate Medicare users' feedback into improved training and services.

Monique wasn't yet 40 when she was diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer. She beat the odds but was left with lymphoedema, a chronic swelling condition. She became involved in patient research after recovering from treatment and "got a taste for it". That and subsequent work helped her appreciate the power of data to empower advocacy and shift policy.

Being the Chair of CAG: "I want under-recognised voices at the table"

CAG provides lived experience perspectives to Wounds Australia . The group's membership reflects the diversity of both the chronic wound community and Australia at large. Monique was chosen for her long history of representing the patient voice and ability to translate patient needs to practice.

In reflecting on her role, Monique says

Having been a teacher and a patient advocate, as Chair I want to create a space where different people with chronic wounds can come forward and elevate their message.

CAG has provided feedback on Wounds Australia's educational materials to make them much more consumer-oriented and has also recommended new factsheets to address more types of chronic wounds. Monique notes that several themes have emerged as being key to empowering chronic wound sufferers:

Career reflections: "People need to be empowered with the knowledge to advocate for themselves."

In her teaching days, Monique worked with the most vulnerable children in disadvantaged areas of London and in her years of advocacy has come to see her work as being based in empathy, as "when I tell other's people's stories, I'm there with them."

She sees the same thread winding through her time in Medicare and as a patient with lymphoedema when there was little support for the unique needs of chronic sufferers. At Wounds Australia, she has seen the same philosophy of empathy at work – the desire to help people lift each other up and seek the help they need.

Part of that help is the scientific and medical community who see chronic conditions from a clinical perspective. As a translator between scientific and patient communities, Monique knows building a strong rapport with technical experts is key to finding the level of communication that works for all parties: still evidence-based but truly tailored to the end-user.

In that way, Monique's experience and focus mirrors the broader work of Wounds Australia to elevate the level of education and support for the approximately 450,000 Australians living with a chronic wound. Through fundraisers and other events, educational initiatives and materials, human stories and advocacy on behalf of the chronic wounds community, Wounds Australia is driving a sea change in awareness and action through the Be Wound Aware campaign. For more information, see www.woundaware.org.