Chris Gilford was born in the UK and trained as a medical practitioner in London. After working in hospitals around London for a couple of years, he migrated to Australia. He has worked as a General Practitioner in Sydney, Perth and various towns, but in 2000 moved to Normanton, a remote town in far north Queensland as he was looking for the challenge of working with a large population of First Nations people. He was the Medical Superintendent at the Hospital and ran the Medical Centre, being the sole doctor in the Shire of Carpentaria, which is larger than half the countries in Europe. He observed at first hand how the health of First Nations people was much poorer than other Australians, with large numbers of patients with chronic diseases such diabetes, kidney and heart disease. After eleven years there he had a few months off before working for three years in Mornington Island, a First Nations community with even more health and social problems. Here the disease burden was even greater, with large numbers of the community drinking home brewed alcohol, high levels of violence, and also an epidemic of sexually transmitted infections. All this was occurring despite numerous Government programs put in place to solve the problems. He has now retired and lives in WA.