Mary Robinson, a beacon of change, at St Luke’s Symposium
Each year, RCPI’s St. Luke’s Symposium presents a programme of groundbreaking advances in world health.
At No. 6 Kildare Street on 16 October, a panel session titled “Navigating Health, Climate and Global Responsibility” commenced with a screened pre-recorded conversation between RCPI President Dr Diarmuid O’Shea and Mary Robinson.
President of Ireland between 1990-1997, Mary Robinson has led a distinguished career in human rights, having been the United Nations's High Commissioner for Human Rights, and co-founding member of The Elders with Nelson Mandela - which she served as Chair of from 2018-2024. Mrs Robinson recently received the Stearne Medal, named after the Founding President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, John Stearne. The medal acknowledges persons of distinction who have made a significant contribution to global health.
Their conversation began with Dr O’Shea asking Mrs. Robinson how formative was her time studying at Harvard Law School in the late 1960s – during the campus protests of 1968. She said seeing her law school peers turn down corporate jobs in favour of working with civil rights and poverty programmes bestowed a suspicion of false pride – what her husband calls her “Harvard humility” – that drove her to campaign for the Trinity College Seanad seat in 1970, a seat long-held by late-career male professors.
The discussion then touched on highlights of Mrs Robinson’s presidency of Ireland, such as her landmark visit to the Native American Choctaw community in Oklahoma as part of the 150th commemoration of the Great Famine. During her time as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, she realised the potential of representing and amplifying the marginalised, the importance of “getting the voice out.” She singled out Nelson Mandela’s invitation to join the board of the newly formed GAVI alliance dedicated to administering vaccines and improving access to immunisation in poor countries.
The current landscape, however, with its global health and climate crises, presents difficult challenges. “This is such a bad time,” she said.
She criticised the U.S’s decision to withdraw funding from Gavi.
At one point, Dr O’Shea asked: “Whan you have a person who misrepresents the facts, how do you resist that?”
“I think it’s important to step up to bullies,” she responded. “I think it’s important to speak out.”
Mrs. Robinson said doctors have an advantageous position to enable trust and bring change to their communities. “My father was a very vocational doctor,” she said. “He would always take time with people. That extra 15 minutes on the porch, that’s important.”
The screening was followed by a panel discussion with healthcare leaders. Prof Áine Carroll – a rehabilitation medicine consultant at the National Rehabilitation Hospital, and vice-president of the Women in Medicine in Ireland Network – singled out how Mrs. Robinson's experience in Harvard had given her confidence to challenge the male-dominated Seanad seat at Trinity College Dublin. “I truly believe diversity can transform culture, and that won’t happen until we change our institutions,” said Prof Carroll.
Prof Diarmuid O’Donovan, public health medicine physician and former professor of Global Health at Queen’s University Hospital Belfast, also touched on that formative environment of U.S. campus culture during the 1968 protests and made parallels with the present. “She talked about what happened with students. Students mobilising for change in universities right now, that’s a change we’re not meeting,” he said.
“I think she’s a good example of getting it done,” said Dr Ana Rakovac, chemical pathologist at Tallaght University Hospital and Naas General Hospital. Dr Rakovac is co-founder of the non-profit Irish Doctors for the Environment. (Mrs. Robinson spoke of her commitment to campaigning in recent years to save the climate, a perspective brought on by the birth of her first grandchild. “I was able to think 100 years ahead in a different way,” she said).
Dr Rakovac spoke of tangible change: “We’re bringing into life the college’s position paper from 2023,” she said. “To make the intersection of health and climate known to everyone in the college.”