East Gippsland locations including the Lakes Entrance footbridge, Lake Tyers Beach and the Nowa Nowa trestle bridge have been showcased in a new video celebrating community health across Victoria.
The film, released by the Alliance of Rural and Regional Community Health (ARRCH), highlights how community health services support individuals, families and communities at every stage of life.
Gippsland Lakes Complete Health (GLCH) features alongside other organisations from across rural and regional Victoria, showcasing care that is grounded in local communities and driven by local need.
The video was launched at the ARRCH Conference in Ballarat and aims to increase awareness and understanding of the role community health organisations play across the state.
GLCH chief executive officer Anne-Maree Kaser and former board member Robyn Cooney appear in the film, reinforcing the message: “We choose community health.”
“Community health provides health without walls,” Ms Cooney said.
“It’s really important that we rely on people and services, rather than buildings, to deliver healthcare.
In the end, health is about wellbeing.”
The production involved extensive travel, with videographer Mark Simmonds covering 4000 kilometres and condensing
four hours of footage into a four-minute film.
At the conference, Ms Kaser also hosted a panel discussion on the future of community health and its growing role in preventative care.
“We are incredibly fortunate in Victoria to have a registered independent community health system — the only jurisdiction in Australia to have retained this model,” she said.
“It’s important to listen to the experts, and the experts are people, communities
and the organisations that support them.”
Several GLCH staff also presented at the conference, including research and program evaluation officer Jannine Bailey, who spoke about the organisation’s Consumer Voice Framework, and health promotion officer Renate Hall, who shared insights from the Let’s Veg Up! campaign currently running in Ritchies IGA supermarkets in Paynesville and Eastwood.
The ARRCH video is available to view via the organisation’s website.
