Foundation buoyed by Cairns conference outcomes
June 5, 2009The recent National Rural Health Conference has delivered two positive outcomes for the Rural Health Education Foundation: a large number of visitors to the Foundation’s exhibition stand; and the launch of the Priority Recommendations, a manifesto proposing 19 changes to the Australian health system, six of which hold significant promise for Foundation stakeholders.
Popular exhibit attracts visitors and feedback
More than half of the event’s 920 delegates visited the Rural Health Education Foundation’s exhibition stand during the conference, which was held over four days from 17-20 May in Cairns, North Queensland.
Foundation CEO Don Perlgut, Deputy CEO Amanda Little and Communications Manager Clair North were on hand to personally spread the word about the Foundation’s objectives, services and achievements to around 500 visitors, and to gather important feedback to help fine-tune the Foundation’s future programs.
“I don’t think we’ve ever handed out as many free sample DVDs of our health education and training programs as we did in Cairns,” says Foundation CEO Don Perlgut. “It was heartening to meet so many current and potential program users in person and be able to talk face to face about what’s important to them, in terms of health education specifically and health services generally.”
New priorities for rural health
The Cairns conference also saw the launch of the Priority Recommendations, a set of proposals agreed to by the conference delegates, which cover major change to the structure of the health system, a national rural health plan, climate change and a range of more specific matters.
“In particular, we believe that a number of the recommendations resonate strongly with the Foundation’s mission and, if adopted, would provide significant benefits to many of the Foundation’s stakeholders,” said Mr. Perlgut.
The recommendations closely aligned to the Foundation include the implementation of existing national strategies related to health; the development of a national rural health plan to succeed Healthy Horizons, the strategic framework which lapsed in 2007; ongoing tracking of undergraduate, post-graduate, training and practice trends in rural areas for all disciplines; climate change to be recognised as a core issue for health; the new National Men’s Health Strategy to include specific measures for rural and remote areas (see the Foundation’s planned August 2009 program on Men’s Health); and improving food security in remote areas.
More information
To read the conference recommendations in full, visit the Priority Recommendations web page.
For more information on the conference visit the National Rural Health Conference website.