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24 January 2022 — Blog

If you want valuable insights from health consumers you engage with, you should start by paying us

For Patient and Health Consumer Advocates it’s a familiar and off-putting first thought when someone approaches us about joining a committee, attending a working group session, or speaking at an event to share our insight into health system reform and innovation from a very different and incredibly...
22 November 2021 — Blog

The consuming issue of health care

Why consumers and not patients? That’s the question I opened with in my presentation on Consumer-Centred Care and Consumer Leadership to the 3rd Asia Pacific Patients Congress this week. The consumer versus patient question is one we at the Consumers Health Forum have heard over the years, although...
11 November 2021 — Blog

Taking journalism seriously – media in the age of COVID

The global COVID-19 pandemic took place in the context of another crisis – the upheaval of the news media landscape, writes Kerry McCallum, on behalf of the News and Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra. Technological, cultural and policy shifts mean big changes to the way ‘news’ as...
3 November 2021 — Blog

Vale Lynda Condon (1957-2021)

Lynda Condon, consumer advocate The CHF community was deeply saddened to hear of the passing recently of Lynda Condon. Lynda was a passionate consumer advocate, and the co-facilitator of the CHF Safety and Quality Special Interest Group. She was always kind and equally fierce in her determination...
1 November 2021 — Blog

A consumer perspective on the intersection of healthcare and data

If anything positive has come out of COVID-19 it is increased trust and respect in the community for science and the vital importance of access to and appropriate use of good data. With the speed of the introduction of digital innovations, including in health, there has been a noticeable and...
20 October 2021 — Blog

Why we need more than a summit to fix health insurance

Calls by two leading health industry organisations for a summit to discuss private health insurance reform raise a development of significant interest to health consumers. The Consumers Health Forum has been calling for a Productivity Commission inquiry into the issue of government assistance for...
14 October 2021 — Blog

Health Literacy gives us the right reading on health

It’s Health Literacy Month and Australia’s experience with COVID-19 has shown us just how important health literacy --- knowledge and community awareness about our health care --- has been to counter the pandemic, whether by public health measures, masks or vaccination. The Consumers Health Forum...
1 October 2021 — Blog

How COVID times guide our future medicines policy

The National Medicine Policy Review now underway comes at an opportune, if bitter-sweet, time. The all-embracing impact that COVID-19 has wielded in the health system holds important lessons for the future shape of the way Australia — its consumers, clinicians and industry — manage medicines. That...
27 September 2021 — Blog

How communities help bring vaccinations to the bush

As a former general nurse and midwife in outback South Australia, Christine Wakelin brings an in-depth grasp of health issues in the bush. She has lived and worked for many years with husband Barry on a farm, 23 kms from the town of Kimba. “We claim to be halfway across Australia, from Sydney to...
17 September 2021 — Blog

Health consumers as agents of change

Australia’s health system is no longer fit for purpose and central to the fundamental changes needed should be a shift towards a more wellness-focused and consumer-centred ethos. It is time to move on from the old-fashioned notion that in health policy we pay attention only to the clinician and not...

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