Dr Fiona Stanley: ‘If we want better health outcomes, the last thing we need is more doctors and hospitals’

Epidemiologist, paediatrician and avid ocean swimmer Professor Fiona Stanley takes a walk on Fremantle’s South Beach. Photograph: Tace Stevens/The Guardian

Fiona Stanley arrives at South Beach Cafe at 11.30am on the dot, beaming beneath her orange sunhat. She’s bright-eyed and buoyant, perhaps owing to her morning laps at Fremantle pool, a twice-weekly ritual. In the warmer months, she swims here, at South Beach, a calm, protected bay on the Indian Ocean.

“I’m an addicted ocean swimmer,” she says, as we toddle up the pathway to the beach beneath a row of Norfolk Island pines. “But I’m so much fitter since I joined this swim group. We swam almost 2.5km this morning!”