the place to be….
10th National Rural Health Conference
17-20 May, 2009
Attended by Ellen McIntyre, PHC RIS
More than 900 delegates meet recently in Cairns for the 10th National Rural Health Conference. A major focus at the Conference was the social and economic determinants of health and the social gradient which affects the health of individuals and communities. The cohesion of the rural and remote health sector was obvious in many presentations as was the capacity for innovation and the resilience of the people in this sector. Delegates presented many examples of their ability to lead health innovation and the development of better ways of providing health services, despite the enormous challenges posed by the natural and financial environments.
Keynote speaker Dr Joshua Tepper,
a family physician and an Assistant Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in Canada challenged delegates to move away from the traditional ‘problem-focused’ approach towards identifying what is working well. He urged delegates to consider the central principle of health care to be the ‘value for the patient’.
Both Paul Lucas, Queensland’s Deputy Premier and Health Minister and Chief Nurse and Midwifery Officer Rosemary Bryant welcomed the recent Federal Budget announcements on maternity services and on giving access to the MBS and PBS for nurse practitioners and selected midwives. It is hoped that this will provide greater choice for rural women in maternity services and birthing centres.
Chair of the National Rural Health Alliance, Dr Jenny May stressed the need for equal health for rural and remote people – stating that regionalisation will be the best way to deliver funding equivalence for regions, weighted by health need.
Fred Chaney and Fran Baum, two of Australia’s most eloquent and passionate advocates for the social determinants of health, reminded delegates of the vital contribution of education and social status to an individual’s health.
Delegates agreed on a number of recommendations covering major change to the structure of the health system, a national rural health plan, climate change and a range of more specific matters. These will inform the future policy and advocacy agendas for organisations in the rural and remote health sector, including the NRHA.
These and further information are available at <http://10thnrhc.ruralhealth.org.au>
Making research work for better health
PHCRED Tri-State Forum
26 June 2009, Adelaide
Attended by Eleanor Jackson Bowers, Rachel Katterl, Ellen McIntyre, Nova Reinfield & Amy Hoffmann, PHC RIS
On Friday 26 June the PHCRED Tri-State Forum was held in the National Wine Centre in Adelaide. We heard about the many research projects being conducted across the region and about the next stage of PHCRED, which will be informed by a number of current strategies for health reform as well as a national consultation.
However what captured my interest were ideas raised by Heather Petty from SA Health and Helena Williams from the GP Network South about the complexity of the system in which health initiatives and primary health care research take place and how they impact collectively to affect health and wellbeing.
The perspectives and needs of research users were highlighted by both speakers. GPs want and need research which informs the problems they face everyday if they are to participate and policy makers need research which frames the question from their perspective and provides answers on which direction to take given the political context. Researchers are encouraged to build relationships with research users and with communities they are researching in order to gain their cooperation, to enter into the mindset of the user, to identify their political imperative and devise research which achieves their goal.
These themes emphasise the socially complex and political nature of research and how the combined perspectives of commissioners and research subjects interplay with those of researchers to create research as a true social product with an explicit social agenda.
Research becomes a catalyst which mobilises people, money and organisations to achieve something, and as the PHC RIS work on research impact has shown, projects with this social organisation are more able than projects done in isolation to achieve an impact in the world. It’s a very different research paradigm than many are used to but it seems to be gathering force.
Presentations are available at <www.phcredtristate.org.au/resources.html>
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