The recent National Health Reform Summit in Canberra provided an opportunity to discuss the healthcare landscape, the challenges our health care systems face and opportunities for improvement.
Two key messages emerged from the day’s discussions:
The lack of a clear system driver is the main barrier to reforming Australia’s health system – the range of funders, policy-makers, providers and data sources/researchers don’t come together to work towards a shared outcome/s such as equity of access.
And that underpins the second key message – that the health system is still a long way from being focused on people’s needs, in all their diversity.
We see that every day in the work we do at Health Justice Australia, building health justice partnerships between health and legal services so that they’re better able to respond to the many different issues that affect people’s health.
These issues might be straightforward problems like mould in public housing causing respiratory problems or debts that create anxiety and prevent people meeting their health costs.
The health system has become good at recognising the underlying causes of these problems. And through health justice partnerships, we’re now providing the health system with the levers to fix those problems.
We’re also working on more acute problems such as poor mental health, drug and alcohol dependency or family violence that result in children being removed from their mothers at birth. Health justice partnerships are enabling us to provide opportunities for early intervention, working with those parents to create a safe, healthy environment at home for them and, critically, their children.
These partnerships have been practitioner-led in the absence of a systemic approach to integrating services around community needs. Health Justice Australia was established to drive that systemic change. As we build our systemic approach, we are looking for collaborators who share our commitment to filling the gaps in health and human services that vulnerable people fall through. If you share that vision, we would love to hear from you.
Read more from the summit in the Croakey roundup.
