Dear {usertag:name}

This is being sent out to Transition The Grove Health Subgroup members.

Local Health Round Table Discussion: Thursday 19th January 7pm at Hungry Jacks Keperra (cnr Settlement Rd and Samford Rd).

Hopefully we’ll be able to get their ‘Round Table’ which is a great discussion den. I’ll also plan for more of us to have some discussion questions on pieces of paper so we can sit at multiple tables depending on how many of us turn up and share ideas.

This meeting is being held in time for us to do some background sharing of ideas before a meeting on the morning of 25th January that I’m booked to go to with Danielle of Community Health Promotions North Lakes Health Precinct. They have organised some funding for local health promotion in ‘The Grove’. We need to progress actual plans for what to do.

The initial proposal was quite simple – to plan a monthly health seminar with each month on a different major topic (heart diabetes…) and get a (free) speaker from the Foundation for each topic. To hold the seminars somewhere like the North West Community Health Centre and to advertise them in the local paper through parent-school newsletters church newsletters sports club newsletters and local health professionals. Transition The Grove volunteers would do the publicity and handle bookings and get supper.

At present the proposal has moved somewhat with more of a focus on working with ‘where people are already gathering’ (Arana Library sports clubs schools churches…) and targeting health promotions activities specifically at their health needs.

QLD Health seems very supportive of us working cooperatively with them on local community health promotion. Our focus on what we can do for our health locally with little external input (like high pharma and surgery and hospitals) has been extremely productive. The big question is how to get people to pick it up and run with it. This sort of community health is where the greatest potential in healthcare lies in Australia but it often gets the least attention.

One thing that would be really good to talk about on Thursday night is what roles it would be helpful to have around getting local health resilience stuff happening. We need people who want to discuss policy and ideas for what will work best locally; people who want to liaise with organisations like QLD Health and Medicare Locals to ensure that we get good input for The Grove. People who can contact local clubs schools churches health professionals. People who can contact Foundations to arrange guest speakers. People who can design brochures. People who can do printing and distributing. People who can serve supper at a seminar. People to come along and make it happen. There are heaps of opportunities to get involved. We need to talk about it.

And be healthy.

Hungry Jacks’ coffee seemed ok to us when we tried it last week (we’re not experts!) and priced very reasonably.

The North West Health Community Consultative Committee has its first meeting of the year this Wednesday (18th) – it would be good if we can also work towards having more community input to feed into that and the TTG Health Subgroup would be a useful channel for that.

If one or two members (not everyone) want to be part of the meeting at North Lakes on 25th January 9:30am I can probably organise that – let me know.

Cheers

Anne Tennock

Subgroup Organiser

administrator@transitionthegrove.org.au