Doctor of Philosophy (Communication), 2021
Community Alumni Award
As a teenager growing up in Tondo, Manila, Michael Camit was always questioning his world. After his dreams of becoming a priest were dashed due to his non-conformity and lack of obedience, he got a scholarship at the University of the Philippines to study a Bachelor of Arts in European Languages. From there he came to Sydney for further study, eventually completing a PhD in Communication at UTS in 2021.
Michael has always been passionate about righting inequality by educating and empowering marginalised communities to improve health outcomes. After arriving in Australia, he set up the first HIV positive Asian support group in the country. Seeing the communities he was working with receive translated health information rather than any substantial effort being made to address power imbalances planted the seed for his future career.
Since then, he’s developed numerous award-winning multicultural health communication campaigns, including the award-winning Pink Sari Project which increased breast cancer screening rates for women from Indian and Sri Lankan backgrounds from 5% to 24% in two years. He also successfully lobbied Breast Screen NSW to expand their language and ethnicity data for women from Indian backgrounds to include six Indian languages other than Hindi and Tamil. During COVID he provided advice on addressing health misinformation and anti-vaccine sentiments among migrant communities.
In his current role as Manager of Health Literacy for South-Western Sydney Local Health District, Michael has implemented a mental health literacy program in 10 languages. He’s also received $400,000 over two years from NSW Health in partnership with UTS to develop the South Western Digital Health literacy and refugee project, addressing lack of health resources for refugee communities. This project is aimed at giving refugee communities the education and resources to evaluate and assess health information, address misinformation and create social media content to promote health information that’s relevant to them.
During his time at UTS, Michael was touched by the kindness of the people he met. He learned to trust himself and focus on the impact he was making on people and communities rather than volume of publications.
I share what I know about the system with people and hopefully light a fire within them. My proudest achievements are when I see individuals or groups I work with become independent and excel, like the Pink Sari Project.