Gallipoli Medical Research CEO Miriam Kent had the chance to speak to Loretta Ryan and Craig Zonca from ABC Brisbane this morning, following the Friends of GMR national launch at Parliament House on Tuesday.

LORETTA RYAN: We all know sport, or some form of movement is good for us, and now there’s a suggestion it could be transformational for the health and wellbeing of defence veterans.

CRAIG ZONCA: So Gallipoli Medical Research has launched a three-year national research program here to look at whether sport can help veterans and their families with that transition from, from service to civilian life.

LORETTA RYAN: Yeah, it’s about creating more opportunities for veterans to reconnect and thrive, and it’s happening right here in Brisbane. Miriam Kent is the CEO of Gallipoli Medical Research. Hello, Miriam.

MIRIAM KENT: Good morning, Loretta. Lovely to be with you and Craig this morning.

LORETTA RYAN: Now you’ve launched this initiative in Canberra on Vietnam’s Veterans Day this week. You’re still in Canberra as we speak. How will this research be carried out?

MIRIAM KENT: Yeah, lovely. Thank you. Gallipoli Medical Research, we’re a leading research institute. For the last twenty-one years, we’ve been improving the health and wellbeing of veterans and their families. What we’ve been doing is actually looking at insights of research of the challenges that often happen for veterans as they transition to civilian life.
And one of those challenges is purpose and connection, and sport is that unifier, and we’ve developed a three-year research program to really improve the engagement of veterans in sport.

LORETTA RYAN: Yeah. Why do you think sport can be particularly helpful?

MIRIAM KENT: Well, first up, if you think about veterans and you think about sport athletes, there’s a lot of similarities in their attributes. They’re disciplined, they’re physically, physical endurance. They’re both on a mission greater than themselves. So there’s a lot of similarities in the types of people who that can bring together. Sport also is a unifier in terms of purpose and connection, health and wellbeing, and the opportunity to see veterans more in sport and providing those services would really improve our community outcomes.

CRAIG ZONCA: One issue that comes up time and time again is for veterans, a lot of the time their, their bodies are broken. Miriam, I know you talk about sport—is it about participating in sport or ancillary to the sport itself?

MIRIAM KENT: Yeah. I’ll talk you through some of the projects, but you’re absolutely right, Craig. So adaptive sport really sort of helps in that point, but actually it’s about all roles of sport. It could be coaching; it could be umpiring. They don’t have to be actually playing. It’s about actually bringing their strengths and skills and attributes.

CRAIG ZONCA: Yeah, so that broader community of sport you’re referring to. Okay, this three-year research program, obviously here in Southeast Queensland, we’ve got most sporting codes represented. How much support have you had from clubs themselves?

MIRIAM KENT: Oh, look, it, it has been fantastic. We started this engagement eighteen months ago, and our first point was actually to go and talk to sport.
We had the research from veterans and their families, but we actually needed to talk to sport to see was there an opportunity, did they see value? And it was just a natural marriage. What we heard was, absolutely, we need the volunteers. We see huge strengths in the veteran community. What we also heard was great stories of individual sports really connecting into veterans.

And just to highlight one, Little Athletics out of Ipswich—that’s run by two veterans. But what we don’t have is a national framework that really supports veterans to be engaged into sport.

So the projects that we are leading, the first one is actually an engagement framework for veterans and their families into sport, and we’re very grateful to Tim Fairfax AC who has funded that project.

And the second one is the state of play. What we don’t know today is veteran participation into sport. We don’t know how many veterans are using sport. We don’t know where they’re using it. If you think of our rural and regional communities, we don’t know what sports. We don’t know what are the benefits they’re getting from sport, or actually what are the barriers to your point earlier, that are impacting them being engaged in the sporting community.

The third project is actually called Beyond Service, where we want to create that volunteering and leadership framework for our veterans and their families. And the final project, which, you know, we’ve also got Defence on board as a member of Friends of GMR, it’s actually about what are– what’s the measurement framework?

You know, in traditional sport elite sport, we talk a lot about winning, but actually the things that are important to veterans may not be that. It may be more purpose and connection. It may be more camaraderie. It may be more sense of community, and we want to create that measurement framework so that it can– so we can actually measure and provide the evidence base as to the value of veterans’ engagement in sport.

LORETTA RYAN: Yes, so important. Miriam if people want to get involved, what should they do? How do they get involved?

MIRIAM KENT: That’s wonderful. We, we are all for engagement and involvement, and we’re on that journey. So if they could come onto our website, which is www.gallipoliresearch.com.au, we’d love to connect with them.

LORETTA RYAN: Okay, that’s wonderful, Miriam. Thank you so much for telling us about it. All the very best with the three years of research. Miriam Kent from the Gallipoli Medical Research. Thanks for that.