Felicity Croker

Informed by 40 years of clinical practice, teaching and research in regional, remote and disadvantaged communities within Australia and the Asia Pacific, Felicity is strongly committed to educating a socially accountable health workforce who can contribute effectively to low resource communities within the tropics. This commitment is reflected in her JCU Excellence awards, multiple citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning and Australian Award for University Teaching Excellence.

Felicity has applied a broad inter-professional focus to teaching and research roles across disciplinary boundaries and campuses while working with social sciences, Indigenous health, education, health sciences, public health, medicine and dentistry. Currently, as an Adjunct Associate Professor, Felicity actively engages in JCU research and teaching roles, and continues with health-related consultancy work.

Current collaborative research focuses on rural health workforce, dental graduate outcomes, LGBTQIA+ education for health professionals, and the award winning Dentists and Domestic Violence – Recognise Respond and Refer program, which focuses on developing dentists’ capacity to respond appropriately to domestic violence and provide trauma informed care.

Career highlights include being a founding academic in both Nursing Sciences and Dental Surgery at JCU, contributing to remote Indigenous public health research, establishing international clinical placements for Dentistry, developing a successful dentistry capstone year, embedding domestic violence education into dental curricula, developing student dentists’ ability to provide oral health promotion and respond effectively to medical emergencies, and enabling young dental researchers to succeed.

As a founding academic in JCU Dentistry, she has contributed to curriculum development, implementation and evaluation of the program leading to full accreditation (2013). She successfully initiated and coordinated 19 domestic and 8 international dentistry placements.

Felicity is a former member of the Cairns and Hinterland Health and Hospital Board (2013-2016). She has twice been appointed to the Regional Development Australia (FNQ & Torres) Board, served on the Cairns Hospital Ethics Committee for 13 years and continues to contribute to rural and remote health organisations.

Previously, Felicity successfully managed completion of the NHMRC Longitudinal Indigenous Health project (2008). She contributed to Queensland’s rural and remote training and chronic disease initiatives as a regional project leader (2007-2010). Subsequent consultancies have prepared Aboriginal health services for accreditation and reviewed health workforce planning in the Northern Territory (2009-2010). With Latrobe and JCU colleagues, she collaboratively implemented the NHMRC partnership project focussed on Engaging Rural Communities in Oral Health (2013-2017). While Associate Dean Teaching and Learning (2010 – 2014) she contributed to Faculty / DTHM performance during a period of significant policy changes and higher education reforms. She was selected to represent JCU in Beijing (1995) and coordinating the Swedish rural exchange program (1996-1997).