Population Health Congress 2008 Health For All Workshop

Health For All Workshop Details

PHM Oz worked with the Political Economy of Health and Primary Health Care Special Interest Groups of the Public Health Association of Australia to present a one-day workshop prior to the Population Health Congress in July 2008.

Back to the grassroots: Rediscovering the values
Sunday 6th July, 9.30-4.00, Brisbane

On Sunday 6 July 2008 PHM Oz held a workshop “Health for All” in conjunction with, and supported by, the Political Economy of Health and Primary Health Special Interest Groups of the Public Health Association of Australia. The workshop preceded the Population Health Congress in Brisbane and was well attended with nearly 40 enthusiastic people from around Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Bangladesh and India.

We started the day by reorganising the room to make a circle and introducing ourselves. Although many people said that they came to learn, it was clear that everybody brought diverse backgrounds and passions to the meeting. During our self-introductions we acknowledged the traditional owners of the land of Brisbane where we were meeting.

Introductory sessions on PHM globally and in Australia generated questions and discussion and set the scene and context for further exploration during the day around the direction for PHM in our region. The presentations described various aspects of the people’s health movement as an organisation, network of networks and a social movement. This was strengthened and extended through presentations from New Zealand, Fiji and Bangladesh.

Pat Neuwelt spoke about the history of PHM in NZ and explained that, although there are around 40 people on their activist list, they don’t necessarily know who is on the list. Pat noted that the current arrangement of PHM NZ as a loose network of individuals can work well for those who work in jobs where their activist interests cannot be carried out so publicly. The central theme of PHM NZ is people-centred health systems and we heard about the Primary Health Care Strategy, a community health centre that Pat was involved with as a General Practitioner and a symposium they are organising to celebrate the 30th birthday of the Alma Ata declaration in September.

Premila Kumar was our guest speaker from Fiji. Although Premila has a background as a public servant, she is now the CEO of the Consumer Council of Fiji where she plays an active role in a range of health issues particularly related to trade policy. Premila took us through some of the major health issues for Fiji that highlighted starkly the negative impacts of globalisation, especially free trade, including transport costs (access to health care), importation of inferior quality food (such as mutton flaps), diabetes, brain drain of health professionals out of Fiji, problems with overseas trained doctors, and a lack of access to drinking water despite Fiji water being exported in bottles!

Premila inspired us with stories of her work using photos of newspaper headlines to capture some of the issues. She provided these five areas that she sees as challenges in Fiji: </br>

• Advocate for transparency in the national budget
• Share advocacy material among countries regarding, for example, healthy lifestyles, tobacco and HIV
• Lobby to ban inferior food products and expired (or nearly expired) drugs from reaching Pacific Island countries
• Develop strategies to lobby for reform in regional health disparities at influential regional meetings
• Encourage city libraries to provide health information

Sovan Dev is from Bangladesh but currently a Masters student at La Trobe University. Sovan gave us an overview of the state of health in Bangladesh. Some major issues include population growth which is slowing very slowly, arsenic in drinking water, and lack of equity for women with one of the highest rates of partner violence in the world. We were surprised to hear that there are twice as many doctors as nurses registered in Bangladesh.

After lunch, Wayne Sanderson of the Queensland Multicultural Development Association took us on an historical and current romp through the diverse influences on the Association and Queensland politics. We learned about some of the difficulties faced by refugees and asylum seekers under the Howard government and the new situation under the Rudd government. We also reflected on the changing needs of people seeking new lives in Australia as people arrive from different parts of the world.

During our final session we broke into state-based groups to think about some of the questions developed earlier in the day.

• What is the role of PHM Oz and PHM NZ in our region?
• What projects might we undertake? (Brain drain, mutton flaps, intellectual property, refugee health issues)
• What are the leverage points?
• What are our values?
• Who are the people we might want to build links with?
• How do we get peoples’ voices and stories heard?

The task we had was to discuss one topic, potential project or work area keeping in mind the following principles:

• Building solidarity
• Networking
• Movement building
• Addressing local and global dimensions

The groups had some great discussion and debate then presented their thoughts to the rest of the group.

Northern Territory/South Australia/New Zealand
This group looked at applying an ethical lens to the problem of brain drain. They considered it important to act as global citizens by considering the global consequences of local actions. They noted the importance of building on existing work and linking with existing groups.

New South Wales
The NSW group gave extensive consideration overseas trained health professionals in Australia identifying a number of negative and positive consequences for both the communities served and the health professionals. They also considered the issue of brain drain more broadly including some of the drivers in Australia and consequences for developing countries. They outlined a five point action plan: building solidarity; advocating for fixing the local drivers; mapping activists’ interests, skills and networks; generating more information for the Australian setting; and holding a seminar on the brain drain issue.

Queensland
Almost everyone in the Queensland group was brand new to PHM and so the group thought about some ideas for building the movement such as communication strategies, having PHM speakers at conferences and working up from small local projects. A key issue the group thought about was keeping the role and messages of PHM consistent across local, national and international levels.

Victoria
The Victorian group thought about organisations to contact for affiliation. They also discussed a forum that will be happening in September and the importance of participating in the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission consultations making links to global policy including the World Bank. The also started thinking about holding an event around late October, early November about brain drain and PHM.

In our concluding minutes, we agreed to work towards meeting again to pursue our efforts. Our first opportunity may be in Perth at the Australian Health Promotion Association meeting in May 2009 followed by the next Public Health Association of Australia meeting (possibly in Canberra) in September 2009.

We thank Deb Gleeson, Doug Welch and Helen Keleher for organising such a successful day and all the speakers and participants for their contributions.