Mind the Gap: How Rebecca Keeley hopes to re-design allied health service delivery in Australia

The Scholars Podcast - Conversations with Inspiring Leaders

The typical waitlist for a child to access specialist public health services in rural and remote Australia is roughly four years. There are only two speech pathologists in the whole of Australia who work in Aboriginal medical services. With the NDIS opening the floodgates to more and more families needing allied health support, this unmet demand appears to be growing and is unlikely to diminish soon.

Enter Rebecca Keeley, 2022 Tim Fischer John Monash Scholar, speech pathologist, rural health care advocate, and now a tech entrepreneur. Rebecca is the Founder & CEO of Yarn Speech, a startup helping to make basic speech pathology principles more accessible for children and their carers.

Yarn Speech has already caused a stir on the cusp of its official launch. The product is hotly anticipated by families increasingly desperate to access support and is backed by local clinicians nationwide. Rebecca was recently awarded the NSW/ACT AgriFutures Australia Rural Women's Award for her work at Yarn Speech.

In this episode, we discuss with Rebecca the experiences that have inspired her to tackle the problem head-on, and the challenges she’s had to navigate.

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