Australian Health Promotion Association

💡 Reflections from the National Health Promotion Symposium 💡 Health promotors recently gathered on Ngunnawal Country, Canberra, for the National Health Promotion Symposium organised by the Australian Health Promotion Association. As part of the symposium, we hosted an interactive workshop responding to the theme: Shaping the Future of Health Promotion. Senior Policy Officer Sienna Aguilar and Policy Advisor Kate May led the workshop titled, ‘Bridging the Gap: A Gender-Responsive Approach to Health and Chronic Conditions'. Building on the growing evidence-base of research and lived experience, key takeaways included: 🔎 Women live with more chronic conditions and pain than men across the lifespan. 🔎 Women continue to report gendered bias, discrimination, and dismissal when seeking support for chronic conditions and pain. 🔎 By acknowledging and addressing gendered inequities in research, policy, and practice, we can make positive change. Participants also reflected on how they could apply gender-responsive health to their work—whether in community health, academia, policy or beyond. Find more about the workshop on our website: https://lnkd.in/gGhk4E4b #GenderResponsiveHealth #HealthPromotion #WomensHealth #HealthEquity #AHPASymposium2024

The next edition of AHPA's National Job Bulletin is out now. This edition was compiled by AHPA member Jane Pirouc and contains 70 health promotion roles from across Australia. Members, log-in to AHPA's website to view: https://lnkd.in/gTEy9AUy A reminder that you can submit roles to be included in the National Job Bulletin using this form: https://Inkd.in/gz-qMMGA. It is free to list roles and both paid and voluntary opportunities are welcome. The National Job Bulletin is produced fortnightly; the next edition will go live on 13 November. #healthpromotion #jobopportunities #memberbenefit

✨ Come along to hear how course accreditation and practitioner registration are value-adding to our profession. ✴ Event details Date: Friday 15 November 2024 Time: 11am AWST, 12.30pm ACST, 1pm AEST, 1.30pm ACDT, 2pm AEDT Location: Microsoft Teams ✴ Presenters 🔹 Lucy Wickham (AHPA) – representing the National Accreditation Organisation. 🔹 Prof Sharyn Burns (Curtin University) – representing an International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) accredited course. 🔹 Meg Scolyer (Gateway Health) – employer of health promotion practitioners who has recently supported all her eligible team members to become registered. 🔹 Alyssa Monte (Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Services) – RHPP who is a graduate of an accredited course. ✴ Registrations The event is free for AHPA members and $25 for non-members. To register for this event: https://lnkd.in/gSc3y4hW Event registrations close Wednesday 13 November 2024. The event link will be emailed to registrants on Thursday 14 November 2024. The event will be recorded and sent to all registrants. #HealthPromotion #Accreditation #ProfessionalDevelopment #Competencies

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of traveling to Ngunnawal Country (Canberra) for the National Health Promotion Symposium, hosted by the Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA). It was wonderful to be surrounded by fellow health promotion professionals—people who share the same passion, language, and vision. The symposium offered two days of inspiring keynotes, thought-provoking panel discussions, and hands-on workshops, making it an ideal opportunity to reconnect with former colleagues and meet new ones. Some highlights for me included: Sione Tu'itahi’s powerful message on leading with the heart in health promotion—reminding us that compassion can often be as important, if not more so, than intellect.
 Nathan Rigney discussing cultural safety and creating culturally safe spaces for everyone, but in particular Indigenous peoples, who’ve had to fight for their cultures. As Nathan said, “Everyone has culture and everyone needs to be connected to their culture for their wellbeing”. Monica Kelly’s reflections on her extensive career, shared fittingly on World Mental Health Day, highlighting the continued need to disrupt and influence in the prevention space. A heartfelt thank you to the AHPA for organising such a fantastic and enriching event!

👋 Are you interested in joining the AHPA® National Board of Directors in 2024-2025? 🔸 We are seeking to recruit up to three positions to the National Board to fill casual vacancies. It is an exciting time to be part of the Association with the development of the new Strategic Plan underway, conditional approval of our Reconciliation Action Plan, extension of Commonwealth funding and a change to systems and processes. 🔸 We are looking for committed, passionate, innovative and experienced health promotion researchers, practitioners, advocates or policymakers with interest and/or experience in governance. We are particularly looking for those with interest or experience in policy and advocacy, technology and IT systems, human resources, project management and business development. We are committed to improving gender equity, and diversity and inclusion on the Board.  👉 Find out more here: https://lnkd.in/gXsqFnd3 #Governance #Volunteer #Leadership #HealthPromotion

NSW/ACT Branch of the Australian Health Promotion Association invites members and non-members to the hybrid film screening of Finding the Money online and at Wollongong University on Wednesday 23rd October, 12.00pm-2.00pm (AEDT). Follow Stephanie Kelton on a journey through Modern Money Theory to unveil a deeper story about money, injecting new hope to tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century: from climate change to inequality. This “must see” documentary film won the Award for Best Feature Film in San Francisco and is about an underdog group of economists on a mission to instigate a paradigm shift by flipping your understanding of the national debt – and the nature of money – upside down. Watch the trailer https://lnkd.in/gXpw-JKi To register for online screening and a Q&A with film maker Maren Poitras, please email: nsw-actbranch@healthpromotion.org.au

Last week, Rebecca Zosel provided live coverage of the National Health Promotion Symposium via the Croakey Health Media rotated @WePublicHealth account. Review the coverage to catch up on the conversations that happened on Ngunnawal Country in Canberra on 9 and 10 October at #AHPASymposium2024. https://lnkd.in/gMvtndS8

📣 The Student and Early Career Practitioner (S&ECP) Practice Group are calling for volunteers to help with the fortnightly National Jobs Bulletin (NJB).  The position will require 2-3 hours per fortnight to:  🔹 Identify health promotion-related job postings  🔹 Review job postings for suitability   🔹 Collate and organise job postings by state and territory 🔹 Submit collated job postings within the required timeframe   🔹 Adhere to a schedule set by the S&ECP working group This would be best suited for a student seeking a flexible volunteer opportunity with AHPA. 👉 Find out more and apply here: https://lnkd.in/gywErcQw #Volunteering #WorkExperience #EarlyCareer #Student

🎉 Congratulations to Kirsty Mullane! Kirsty is the first recipient of the 2024/25 Australian Health Promotion Association scholarship, funded by Healthway . Kirsty will be undertaking a 12-month scholarship with North Metropolitan Health Service with supervisor Julia Platts. Read more about Kirsty and her project below. 👉 Ready to start your career in health promotion? The 2025/26 round of scholarships is currently open, closing on 15th November 2024. For more information, visit: https://lnkd.in/ghhqMcMi ✨ About Kirsty I recently graduated from Curtin University with a Bachelor of Science in Health Promotion and Nutrition. My passion for health stems from my upbringing in the small country town of Carnarvon, 900 km north of Perth. Physical activity and access to healthy fresh food were integral to my lifestyle from an early age. My commitment to enabling change and advocating for health through volunteer work within the Health Promotion Service at North Metropolitan Health Service, inspired me to apply for the AHPA scholarship. ✨ About my project The overarching goal of my project is to facilitate local solutions to food insecurity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in the north metropolitan catchment of Perth. I will be working within the Health Promotion Service at the North Metropolitan Health Service, in collaboration with Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations, to plan, implement and evaluate a culturally appropriate and culturally safe health promotion intervention. The first stage of the project will involve conducting a scoping and intelligence review to identify barriers and enablers of food security specific to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This stage of the project will also involve stakeholder mapping and stakeholder engagement, to inform the development of recommendations for short, mid and long-term food security interventions. Drawing on the findings from the scoping and intelligence review, the second stage of the project will entail developing a detailed project plan. Community development principles such as co-design will be used to action localised, sustainable and culturally safe intervention/s with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. An advisory and working group will be established in the early stages of the project to ensure cultural guidance is provided and the project is designed in collaboration with the target group.

The health promotion community is a special one! We have just had two amazing days at the 2024 National Health Promotion Symposium on Ngunnawal Country, Canberra #ahpasymposium2024. The Symposium allowed us to be inspired, challenge our own thinking, have big picture conversations but also have the space to work on practical skills through a series of fascinating workshops. There were many highlights and key messages that I will be thinking about for the next few days, weeks and no doubt months. Just some of the key things that stand out to me: ▶ We need to share our power with communities in order to address health inequities. ▶ We can’t do it all ourselves, we have to form partnerships outside of health. ▶ We need to develop of skills in the art and science of policy making. ▶ We shouldn’t shy away from addressing the determinants of health – it can’t be put in the too hard basket. ▶ Accountability is important. ▶ Workforce is critical – we need to strengthen it from the inside. The more of us, the more that can be achieved effectively. ▶ There is not enough funding for health promotion and prevention so we need to think about the cost-neutral policy wins alongside advocating for more funding. ▶ We can’t forget about the importance of the environment on health. ▶ It is ok to do things differently, try new things and be ok with failing. I had the privilege of chairing the Health Promotion Agencies Panel – it was great to hear what the agencies are up to and where to next. We could have talked for hours to delve even deeper! I am looking forward to continuing to work with the agencies to better the health promotion workforce and address the root causes of health. Thank you Joanne Graham-Smith Marina Bowshall Robyn Littlewood Dr Sandro Demaio Sione Tu'itahi I also had a wonderful time co-facilitating a workshop with Joelie Mandzufas for The Kids Research Institute Australia on Exploring the role of TikTok in Health Promotion. Great discussions were had and lots of ideas formed! It is always an honour to stand up and represent the Australian Health Promotion Association at these events. I represent not only the membership but the Board, Branches, volunteers and contractors who all work incredibly hard to achieve our vision of a health, equitable Australia. It was wonderful to meet some in person for the first time! Thanks to Laurianne Reinsborough, Dr Gemma Crawford, Aimee Makeham, Rebecca Zosel for being on the Symposium working group all year with a special thanks to Jonathan Hallett who took on most of the organisation – the event went so smoothly thanks to you all. I walk away with hope. As Gloria Steinem has said “Hope is a form of planning. If we don’t hope, we have no future concept that will urge us forward.”