- NACCHO Conference 2022 highlights
- Coonamble AHS launch health app
- Policing, not crime behind swelling prisons
- Health Literacy Strategy – we need your feedback!
- First care standard on stillbirth launch
- ACCHOs issuing bowel cancer screening kits
- $171m for end-of-life care in Queensland
- Sector Jobs
The image in the feature tile is of NACCHO Chair Donnella Mills at the NACCHO Members’ Conference 2022, Tuesday 18 October 2022.
NACCHO Conference 2022 highlights
The two videos below include highlights from the NACCHO Youth Conference 2022 held on Monday 17 October 2022 and the NACCHO Members’ Conference 2022, held from Tuesday 18 to Thursday 20 October 2022.
Coonamble AHS launch new health app
The Coonamble Aboriginal Health Service (CAHS) has broken new ground by developing a mobile app to connect people to health services and promotion. The Fair Dinkum Choices ™ app was launched on Friday 21 October at Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo with a bevy of high profile supporters on hand.
Glen Inglis, former NRL International, has signed on to help champion the app and spoke at the launch about his own story and his Goanna Academy, the first accredited and Indigenous-owned mental health organisation in Australia. He was joined by current NRL player Brett Naden, former National Basketball League star Tyson Demos, the Honorable Mark Coulton MP, Rob Skeen CEO of the Aboriginal Health & Medical Research Council (AH&MRC), Andrew Coe, CEO of the Western Public Health Network, the CAHS Board of Directors and other government officials as well as community members and school students. Master of Ceremonies for the launch was comedian Sean Choolburra and Coonamble’s own Castlereagh Connection provided musical entertainment.
CEO Phil Naden says that CAHS have been working on the app for at least 18 months. “It came out of a grassroots health promotion conversation we had in the community,” Mr Naden said. “We got the idea for the wording ‘Fair Dinkum Choices’ from Jonathon Knight out in Bourke.” “He talks a lot on social media about making ‘fair dinkum choices’ and so I rang and asked him if we could turn this into a health promotion and he said ‘go for it.'”
To read the Western Plains App article CAHS launch health app in full click here.
Beau Ewers, Jonathan Knight, Phil Naden at the launch of ‘Fair Dinkum Choices’. Photo: Bageshri Savyasachi. Image source: Daily Liberal.
Police, not crime behind swelling prisons
In a speech to the Australian Institute of Criminology today, Assistant Minister for Treasury, Dr Andrew Leigh, said Australia’s incarceration rate has more than doubled since the mid-1980s while most crimes have fallen. Leigh said the “issue has instead been with how we have chosen to handle complex social challenges. Stricter policing, tougher sentencing and more stringent bail laws appear to be the main drivers behind Australia’s growing prison population.”
In 2020 research, Leigh – a former economics professor – estimated recurrent spending on prisons totalled $4.7b annually, or $240 for every Australian adult. If the incarceration rate remained at its 1985 level, Australia would save $2.6 billion annually.
Incarceration particularly affects Indigenous Australians, among whom “the incarceration rate has risen from 1% in 1990 to 2.3% today,” and is now more than twice as high as when the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report was delivered. “Based on the available data, incarceration rates for Indigenous Australians are higher than for African-Americans in the US. They are also higher than for Indigenous people in Canada, NZ and the US.”
University of SA emeritus professor of law and criminal justice Rick Sarre said Leigh was smart to frame the argument as an economic one, adding there were “thousands of things you could do” with the money states poured into incarceration. If you pump [the funds] into welfare services, child protection, Indigenous mentoring, mental health support, supplementing income for families in crisis, then you’re going to get far better bang for your buck than waiting for people to screw up and putting them behind bars, which is probably the most inefficient way of stopping crime,” Sarre said.
To view the Brisbane Times article Policing, not crime is behind swelling prisons – and it’s costing billions: MP in full click here.
Image source: Law Society Journal Online.
Health Literacy Strategy – we need your feedback!
The National Health Literacy Strategy Framework Paper is now open for public consultation.
Your feedback is important and will be used to inform the content, approach and structure of the National Health Literacy Strategy.
NACCHO is encouraging all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and organisations, including the health sector, to please take a few minutes to complete the National Health Literacy Strategy Consultation Online Survey here.
The deadline for input is Wednesday 9 November 2022.
You can access the strategy and online survey below:
Consultation Paper – Development of the National Health Literacy Strategy
National Health Literacy Strategy Framework Consultation Survey Questions
Image source: Australian Commission of Safety and Quality in Health Care.
First care standard on stillbirth launch
You are invited to join the online launch of the first national Stillbirth Clinical Care Standard, developed by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. The event will be streamed live from the Annual National Stillbirth Forum being held from 3–4 November 2022.
Stillbirth is a tragic and profound experience that affects more than 2,000 families in Australia every year. Despite being the most common form of perinatal death in Australia, the experience of stillbirth can be hidden due to stigma, taboo and a culture of silence.
At the launch of the Stillbirth Clinical Care Standard from12:30 PM – 1:30 PM AEDT Friday 4 November 2022 you can hear leading experts discuss best practice in preventing stillbirth, investigations after stillbirth and the importance of bereavement care after perinatal loss. This event is relevant to all healthcare professionals involved in providing care during pregnancy, and after stillbirth or other forms of perinatal loss.
Click here to register.
ACCHOs issuing bowel cancer screening kits
Catch Bowel Cancer Early.
From October 2022 ALL ACCHOs can issue bowel cancer screening kits direct to community.
For more information contact the NACCHO Cancer Team by phone 0498 290 059 or by email using this link.
$171m for Qld end-of-life care
Palliative and End-of-Life Care Strategy and Queensland Health Specialist Palliative Care Workforce Plan launched last week. In a statement, minister for health and ambulance services Yvette D’Ath said she understood people with life-limiting illnesses wanted choice and a greater say in where they wished to die.
A total of $102m of the government’s extra investment will go to attracting, recruiting and retaining a specialist palliative-care workforce through the state’s health network. This will include an extra 231 full-time frontline employees such as professional nurses, doctors, physios, and counsellors. “First Nations communities will also benefit from a significant increase in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers, as well as targeted funding to trial innovative models of care to support families experiencing sad news and/or sorry business when losing a loved one or community member.”
To read The Mandarin story Queensland invests more for services to bring dignity to end-of-life in full click here.
Image source: Gwandalan Supporting Palliative Care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities website.
Sector Jobs
Sector Jobs – you can see sector job listings on the NACCHO website here.
Advertising Jobs – to advertise a job vacancy click here to go to the NACCHO website Current job listings webpage. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find a Post A Job form. You can complete this form with your job vacancy details – it will then be approved for posting and go live on the NACCHO website.
