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During Australia's COVID-19 lockdown in 2021, family doctor Jamal Rifi came up with an unusual plan to encourage the remainder of his urban community of Sydney, NSW, Australia, to come forward for COVID-19 vaccination. “I realised we needed to build on our community advocacy work by using an inflatable vaccination facility that could be transported easily into the heart of urban communities that had become COVID-19 hotspots, such as my own suburb of Belmore in southwest Sydney”, Rifi explains. More recently, he has used the vaccination facility to help kick-start a COVID-19 booster programme, and from Jan 10, 2022, has also used it at a local bowling club to serve as a vaccination facility for children aged 5–11 years. Rifi's passion for a community wide approach to health partly stems from a family tragedy as a child in Tripoli, Lebanon. “I was angry after my younger brother died from penicillin anaphylaxis, which made me determined to become a family physician”, he recalls. Lebanon's civil war in the early 1980s upended his plans to study medicine in his home country, and Rifi moved to Romania. After taking classes in Romanian, he studied medicine for 3 years at what is today the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy before eventually moving with his fiancée, Lana, to Australia, where Rifi's first priority was to learn another language. “After training my ear to local radio stations and taking a course in medical English, the Dean of Sydney University Medical School agreed to enrol me so that I could complete medical training there”, Rifi explains.

moving with his fiancée, Lana, to Australia, where Rifi's first priority was to learn another language. “After training my ear to local radio stations and taking a course in medical English, the Dean of Sydney University Medical School agreed to enrol me so that I could complete medical training there”, Rifi explains. After graduating in 1990, Rifi and his young family moved to the Sydney suburb of Belmore, where as a primary care physician he soon became aware of social challenges in the local community. “Poverty and low awareness of health services were widespread in the local Muslim community”, he says. Tensions escalated in the aftermath of the Sept 11, 2001 US terrorist attacks, and in 2005 there were racially motivated riots on Sydney's Cronulla beach. “Local media had fuelled anti-Muslim sentiment by focusing on negative aspects of our community”, Rifi recalls. After the Cronulla riots, Rifi campaigned for peace by creating a local harmonisation project, encouraging young Muslim men to be trained as surf lifesavers on Sydney's western beaches, known as the On the Same Wave programme.

uelled anti-Muslim sentiment by focusing on negative aspects of our community”, Rifi recalls. After the Cronulla riots, Rifi campaigned for peace by creating a local harmonisation project, encouraging young Muslim men to be trained as surf lifesavers on Sydney's western beaches, known as the On the Same Wave programme. His community advocacy work has been evident in the current pandemic. When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, Rifi created a virus testing centre inside tents in the garden of his primary care practice in Sydney, later expanding it into a vaccination facility in 2021. Rifi's COVID-19 advocacy work has helped reach out to the community he serves. “I knew that ‘fortress Australia’ could only be as strong as its weakest point, which put a focus on non-English speaking ethnic minority Australian populations, including the Muslim community close to my practice”, Rifi says. He has led local communications campaigns, using Arab radio stations to promote public health messages, evolving into community online discussion forums where, speaking in Arabic, Rifi has encouraged the local Muslim population to recognise the value of COVID-19 vaccination programmes. He also believes that such advocacy efforts are important among Indigenous communities. “It was an important moment last year when Aboriginal friends of mine performed a cultural blessing for the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine in our community practice, but there is still a lot of work to do to raise awareness of vaccine effectiveness to help bridge the gap in vaccine uptake among Indigenous populations, especially in rural settings”, Rifi says.

Aboriginal friends of mine performed a cultural blessing for the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine in our community practice, but there is still a lot of work to do to raise awareness of vaccine effectiveness to help bridge the gap in vaccine uptake among Indigenous populations, especially in rural settings”, Rifi says. Joe Cordaro, Medical Director of Sydney's Drummoyne Medical Centre, has known Rifi since medical school at the University of Sydney and comments: “It would be easy from Jamal's high-profile media image to assume he has become some sort of crusader or evangelist, or may have been deriving some secondary gain from setting up and promoting his COVID-19 clinic. But Jamal is a deep-thinking human being, an outstanding physician, who has only ever been interested in pursuing initiatives that engender social justice by having the most benefit to the widest cross-section of society. His impact in wider cultural bridge-building in urban areas of Sydney has been profound.”

clinic. But Jamal is a deep-thinking human being, an outstanding physician, who has only ever been interested in pursuing initiatives that engender social justice by having the most benefit to the widest cross-section of society. His impact in wider cultural bridge-building in urban areas of Sydney has been profound.” Rifi's contribution to his local community has recently been recognised by the Australian Lebanese Chamber of Commerce, in addition to other awards over several years for his leadership in community medicine and public health advocacy. Yet retirement remains elusive while Rifi continues working as a COVID-19 tester, vaccinator, and local public health advocate. “I used to dream about owning a motor home, and the idea of driving across Australia with Lana in our retirement kept me going during the dark days of the first wave of the pandemic, when I battled exhaustion and depression”, he says. Rifi, who calls himself “a proud Australian Muslim”, now has his motor home. “I am hopeful that the pandemic, despite its recent resurgence with the omicron variant, will become a more manageable disease; only then will I retire and set out to explore my country. But I will retain my medical licence for at least another 5 years; if I encounter communities in rural Australia that could benefit from my 30 years of community medicine experience, I will be rolling up my sleeves, ready for more work”, he says.