Teleconferencing is a great communication option as it is quick and easy to set up, saves travel time and costs, and enables you to conduct high-quality, reliable meetings over the phone with other stakeholders.
Strengthening meeting skills for teleconferences
Framework for assessing the impact of new health initiatives and policies on consumers
The framework is designed to assist individuals and committees involved in consultative and decision-making processes in analysing policies, grant applications and initiatives presented to them for consideration. It has a particular focus on access and disadvantage, setting out a series of steps which can be followed to assess the degree to which a proposal has been designed with the needs of disadvantaged groups and individuals in mind.
The framework provides a useful tool for identifying gaps in the development of programs where the needs of disadvantaged groups might not have received due consideration. It is not designed to measure or evaluate the success of a program in its application.
A Guide for Community Organisations Running Health Workshops with Consumers
The Aim of this Guide is to provide advice to national community organisations, foundations and associations to use when coordinating, planning and conducting workshops with local community organisations on health topics or issues.
Community workshops are a commonly used technique for raising consumer awareness of a health topic or issue, facilitating the learning of new information and skills and encouraging behaviour change.
The Guide provides practical tips and advice on running successful workshops. By this we mean workshops that consumers will enjoy; that will help build the capacity of local communities to deal with health issues; and that will help equip consumers to exercise more control over their own health, make choices conducive to health and cope with illness, injury or disability.
Tips for Consumer Representatives
Professional and industry groups and so called ‘independent experts’ are frequently asked for their advice and views on matters relating to the health of the community and individuals. Community and ‘lay’ people are also sometimes asked to offer their experience to consider matters of public interest in the health arena, such as priorities in resource allocation or the ethics of health services or research. Increasingly government and others are recognizing the need to hear also about the specific interests of consumers in a range of health and community issues. Often, however, the consumer perspective is forgotten or it is assumed that, since ‘we are all consumers’ it will be well represented by caring providers or those active in the community affairs.
This article gives some ideas about improving our effectiveness as consumer representatives.