Emily is 22 years old and can’t wait to be vaccinated for COVID-19. The long awaited vaccine signals freedom from the pandemic and the chance to relax from the worry, and to travel, visiting friends and family in Broome.

Emily has been working in young people’s mental health since her early teens. She grew up in Broome, and joined headspace, which provides services for young people, on a teacher’s encouragement when she was fourteen. This sparked her interest in youth work and advocacy, and Emily has explored face to face work with local community and council services in the Kimberly region and gone on to leadership and national roles.

Emily started out as a peer support worker, and her experience has led her to training other young people working in peer support, helping to run workshops, to serving on Orygen’s National Youth Advisory Council.

Emily has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which ignited her passion for public healthcare. She lives with fatigue, has problems with her heart and has a compromised immune system. With these symptoms, Emily does not want to make them worse by Getting COVID-19.

Since moving to Perth to be closer to her grandparents, Emily says she has learned to balance herself more with her activities, but she misses the outdoors and access to fresh air living in the regional town of Broome.

She thinks that now people have seen the disease spread in Sydney, they are more likely to want to get vaccinated, and for young people, the chance to get back to normal life is so important.

She wants to be fully vaccinated when she returns home to Broome.

“ I wouldn’t want to be putting my hometown and my community at risk at all,” she says.

Emily was fully vaccinated on 8^th September 2021.