When Vicki Flood was 17 and living in France as an exchange student, people kept asking her a question she could never quite get her head around.
Did Australians cook with butter or oil?
At first she wasn’t sure how to respond. Then she realised the question wasn’t all about cooking. It was also about culture, habits and the different ways people see the world. Years later, as a dietitian, researcher, Professor of Allied Health and now Director of UCRH, those early conversations still echo through her work. What shapes people’s health? What gets in the way? What helps them live well, in the place they call home?
For Vicki, the answer is rarely one thing. Health is food and housing, education and climate, technology and trust, services that talk to each other, and people who feel heard. “Health happens in combination with all parts of our lives,” she says. It is a simple idea, but one that has shaped her vision for UCRH.
Vicki grew up in the Northern Rivers and returned to lead UCRH because she was drawn to the mix of education, research and community in a place she cared about. She saw a chance to support work that was not just excellent, but useful. Work grounded in local need and strong enough to matter well beyond the region.
One of Vicki’s priorities has been making sure UCRH doesn’t just do good work, but understands and demonstrates the difference that work makes.
Around the time she became Director, UCRH was expanding student clinical placement programs in residential aged care facilities through a major Australian Government Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training initiative. With an ageing population and growing pressure on aged care services, she saw an opportunity to build a stronger evidence base around the work, helping the organisation understand what was working, what could be improved and how successful approaches could be sustained into the future.
That same thinking now stretches across our work with student placements, schools, primary care and community programs across the region. It reflects a belief that good intentions matter, but evidence matters too. If something is genuinely improving people’s lives, we should understand why and learn from it.
She is also looking ahead to a world changing faster than anyone can comfortably predict. Artificial intelligence is already reshaping education, but Vicki believes the real skill students will need is critical thinking. In a world overflowing with information, they will need to work out what’s real, what’s useful and what questions still need to be asked.
Perhaps that is why she likes the idea of slowing down.
Slow food. Slow reading. Maybe even, she laughs, “slow AI”.
Not stepping backwards, but stepping carefully. Thinking deeply. Asking better questions.
It is a very Vicki way of looking at the future.
Across 25 years, UCRH has been a research institute, a teaching hub, a workplace, a launch pad for students and a partner to communities across the region.
The next chapter will look different again.
The Northern Rivers is growing and ageing. Technology is reshaping the way people learn, work and access care. Communities are grappling with the long shadow of disasters, housing pressures and climate change.
None of those challenges come with simple answers.
But if there is a thread running through Vicki’s vision for the future, it is the belief that progress starts with understanding people and communities first.
“I think we have a responsibility to be really responsive and embedded in our local community,” she says. “We want to be part of solutions where people see needs.”
The way UCRH’s work evolves over the next 25 years remains to be seen. What seems certain is that the organisation will keep doing what it has always done at its best: listening, learning, bringing people together and helping tackle the challenges that matter most.
