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He runs our most important community group but became an HIV/AIDS educator almost by accident. QAHC manager Paul Martin spoke with Iain Clacher.
Paul Martin always makes an impact on the scene, whether through with his work running Queensland Association for Healthy Communities (QAHC) or with his shock of curly, strawberry-blonde hair.
He first made the pages of Queensland Pride in the mid 1990s when he was running Toehold, a social and support group for young gay men.
Born in 1971 near London, Martin migrated to Australia with his family five years later. The family settled in Runcorn, and it was here “in the middle years of primary school”, young Paul first realised he was different.
“I knew that was what I was but I didn’t know anyone else,” Martin says. “It wasn’t until my second year of university in 1990 that I came out through Toehold, the gay support group. The reaction from my family was fine. There was the normal loss that parents experience from the loss of expectations and having to build a new set of expectations.”
Through Toehold and its QuAC connections, the young student teacher found himself increasingly drawn into a career as a health educator. “I just fell into it, really,” he admits, but before long he was QuAC’s education strategies officer.
Martin left Brisbane in 1995 to work on national HIV prevention campaigns with the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO) in Sydney, but left 18 months later when romance took him back to the UK.
“The relationship didn’t work out,” Martin says, but he stayed to work for gay charities in Bristol and Bath, then on to the seaside gay Mecca of Brighton, where he became manager of the National Health Service’s sexual health education team.
Though he “wasn’t looking or planning to come back to Australia”, he applied for his current role after friends informed him the post was available.
“I was more than happy to come back. QuAC had lost its funding for HIV support and also lost half its staff. It was part of my role to talk to the board about where QAHC was going to go.”
A community consultation process found that “people wanted us to continue the HIV prevention work, and wanted us to address other health issues that affect many more LGBT people than HIV does.
“We’re still in transition. We can’t just change the sign on the front door. It takes time to become the organisation we want to be. Feedback from the interested communities has been quite positive, but I think we’re on trial.
“A lot of what we’re talking about is just words. People need to test us on putting those words into action. It’s a long process getting the trust of government and sponsors to get funding to address some of these other issues,” he says.
QAHC’s ambitions to tackle issues of LGBT mental health and drug abuse have drawn support from Queensland Health, which will finance a new project this year.
“There’s been a change of attitude in the general community and in government. They’re more ready to look at LGBT issues. We have an excellent relationship with Queensland Health but we need to build similar relationships with other departments and start addressing the issues that impact indirectly on LGBT health,” he says.
For a relatively small organisation to tackle such a huge agenda takes commitment.
“It’s not a big bureaucracy. There’s more a family feel among staff and volunteers and we try to encourage that. But having a commitment, drive and energy for the work is important because it’s not like coming to a job and forgetting about it at 5pm,” Martin says.
“It’s part of who I am and hopefully it makes a positive impact on people’s lives.”
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From toehold to the top
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