Heather Keighley

Heather brings a wealth of expe­ri­ence in rur­al and remote health­care span­ning grass­roots clin­i­cal prac­tice, senior lead­er­ship, and nation­al health pol­i­cy devel­op­ment. Her dis­tin­guished career has includ­ed piv­otal roles as Chief Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery Offi­cer for the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry Depart­ment of Health, Exec­u­tive Man­ag­er Health Work­force at North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry Pri­ma­ry Health Net­work, and Direc­tor of Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery for Top End Health Ser­vice.

Cur­rent­ly serv­ing as Chair­per­son of the Nation­al Rur­al Health Alliance, where she has been a ded­i­cat­ed Board mem­ber since June 2020, Heather also holds the posi­tion of Vice-Pres­i­dent and Board Direc­tor of the Aus­tralian Col­lege of Nurs­ing. She rep­re­sents ACN as a Board Direc­tor for the new­ly formed peer sup­port organ­i­sa­tion, Nurse Mid­wife Health Pro­gram Aus­tralia.

Hold­ing a Bach­e­lor of Nurs­ing Sci­ence from Charles Dar­win Uni­ver­si­ty and a Mas­ter of Inter­na­tion­al Health Man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Eng­land, Heather has demon­strat­ed a deep com­mit­ment to advanc­ing rur­al and remote health out­comes through­out her career.

A long-stand­ing CRANAplus Mem­ber and Fel­low, Heather joined the organ­i­sa­tion as Senior Pol­i­cy Advis­er in Decem­ber 2021, where she has been instru­men­tal in strength­en­ing advo­ca­cy efforts and col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ships with peak nurs­ing bod­ies and the broad­er remote health sec­tor. Under her pol­i­cy lead­er­ship, CRANAplus recent­ly released an ambi­tious work­force pipeline plan to deliv­er 1,000 nation­al­ly accred­it­ed nurs­es and mid­wives pre­pared for rur­al and remote prac­tice by 2031.

As CRANAplus’s inau­gur­al Chief Remote Area Nurse, Heather will lead nation­al advo­ca­cy, shape evi­dence-based pol­i­cy, and pro­mote pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice stan­dards to improve health out­comes for Aus­trali­a’s most iso­lat­ed communities.