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.
A Guide for Community Organisations Running Health Workshops with Consumers
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.