Jodie Clarkson

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Jodie Clarkson

Representative

Jodie Clarkson is a palliative care outpatient in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). She has been living with brain cancer since 2017 and has undergone neurosurgery in South Australia and New South Wales as well as chemotherapy in the Northern Territory. Jodie holds a Bachelor of Applied Science and a Master of Education LOTE (Languages Other than English) and EADL (English as an Additional Dialect or Language). She worked and now volunteers with the Aboriginal Interpreter Service training professionals in legal, health and human services. Jodie has published collective learning in the Australian Society of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT) In Touch Journal: https://www.naati.com.au/news/shouldering-the-learning-burden/

In 2018 Jodie was awarded a Fitzgerald NT Human Rights Award for taking action on promoting, protecting and fulfilling human rights of diverse communities in the Northern Territory.

Powered by ‘Mother Love’ for her son, Jodie lives by the mantra planning for the worst while hoping for the best. She consults with the specialist in palliative medicine at Apmere amantye-akeme (Comfort House) monthly. Jodie’s final wish is to donate her brain to the Charlie Teo Foundation (CTF) for research. Together with the Director of Palliative Care NT and Director of ICU, they lobbied the NT Government to amend The TRANSPLANTATION AND ANATOMY ACT 1979 (in force 24th September 2021) to enable her final wish. Tissue from Jodie’s 2018 recurrent Anaplastic Astrocytoma is part of a world first collaborative research project between The Garvan Institute and CTF. In 2022 Jodie was invited to participate in the inaugural CTF Brain Cancer Online Research Symposium: connecting ‘out of the box’ thinkers from across the world.

Jodie is passionate about contributing to brain cancer research and education; patient autonomy as personal power; and enabling free, prior, informed medical consent that upholds every patients right to fully understand and fully express themselves from their first language first, then English.

If you would like to engage Jodie or another consumer representative for your project, please complete an application form and return to projects@palliativecare.org.au or call 02 6232 0700.