First few days.....

Well, what a whirwind of a few days! We (my friend Meinir and her nephew Alun), arrived late on Sunday night, where we stayed in Brisbane and then travelled to Palm Beach (not far from Brisbane, on the Gold Coast), on the Monday morning, where we're staying until Thursday.  Monday was spent trying to get over the jet lag and then it was up to Brisbane yesterday for a day of meetings. 

My first meeting was with staff Queensland Health (Rebecca Whitehead, Roger Meany, Simone Nalatu and Niamh Scully).  Niamh had previously worked for Powys Health Promotion Unit a number of years ago (so did I, but not at the same time), so we had a mutual friend who worked there, who put us in contact.  I'm really grateful to Niamh for arranging for me for me to meet everybody and for the welcome I received there. 

Niamh and Rebecca (Senior Health Promotion Officer with the Intergovernmental Partnerships Team) firstly have me an overview of how the health system works in Australia, which is both similar and different to how it works in the UK.  It took me some time to familiarise myself with the different aspects of Government and I think I'm right when I say that the Federal Government is similar to the UK Government.  Each state then has it's own state government, which is like an individual Welsh Government in each state! The state government can legislate on certain laws and there are variations within each state i.e. there is different tobacco legislation in different states across Australia.  The Federal Government can also legislate on issues that affect all of Australian residents, such as plain packaging.  We also discussed how the change in Government in the past couple of years had affected the priority that preventative health has and that chronic disease management has a higher priority.

Simone then talked about her work as an Advanced Health Promotion Officer within the Community Partnerships team, focussing on Indigenous Health.  This was an interesting conversation to be involved in, as she outlined the work that the department was doing in order to engage with the indigenous population in terms of preventative health and making sure that interventions are culturally apprioriate.  One of the projects that she'd been involved with was the Smokecheck training, which trained members from the indigenous population to be Quitline staff (a telephone line set up to support people who want to give up smoking, similar to Stop Smoking Wales).  She has also been involved in campaigns aimed at promoting services such as Quit Line and as it happened, I saw one (see photo below), on the train on the way home.

Roger, a Manager within the Intergovernmental Partnerships Team, then spoke about the role of local government within Queensland - a role which differs greatly to the one they play in the UK.  Local government in the UK provide many more services than the local government here (where the state government provides those services).  Local government therefore have little to do with preventative health, which was interesting to note.  I do have a picture of us all at yesterday's meeting, but for some reason (and there is steam coming out of my ears!), I cannot download more photos.  When I do work it out, I will post.

I then travelled to another part of Brisbane in the afternoon to meet with Sam and Niamh, who work for Drug Arm Australia.  They work as Prevention Workers for Drug Arm Aus, implementing evidence based projects in the Brisbane and Gold Coast area.  Sam and Niamh were also very welcoming and we discussed different projects that they had been involved in, trying to reduce the use of tobacco and alcohol in the area.  Some of these, such as the Schoolies project, were harm reduction project, whilst others were preventative health projects.  The Schoolies project is a project aimed at young people, who decend onto the Gold Coast after they finished their exams and this has, in the past, caused difficulties in terms of youngsters getting drunk.  They have now set up an alcohol free party for U18's, a re-charge zone (where volunteers look after youg people who are suffering from the effects of alcohol) and services like the ambulance are also there.  Whilst the alcohol free party is very well attended, there is still the issue of pre-loading (where people drink before they go out).  We also dicussed a variety of other projects that they are involved in.  Unfortunately, funding for this work (and for the posts of Prevention Workers) is unstable at present and the future is not clear.

I learnt a great deal yesterday (too much to write in this blog) and was enthused by what I learnt and what we could possibly implement bach in Wales.  We are flying to Cairns tomorrow, where I am going to James Cook Univeristy to meet with Prof Alan Clough and Jan Robertson and also to Wuchopperen Health Service, to meet Nelson Lee, Regional Tobacco Co-ordinator.  Nelson works directly with the indigenous population, so I am looking forward very much to both meetings.

For some reason, I can upload photos from my phone, but not my camera, so here are ones Meinir and I on the beach in Surfers Paradise, where we had a walk last night. I cannot believe that this experience is happening to me - I am in Australia where the weather is fantastic (although a bit too hot!) and am getting to meet people who work in the same field as myself.  I am very grateful to the Winston Churchill Fellowship for giving me this opportunity!

Will post soon - hopefully my camera will be able to upload by then! Btw, I apologise for any spelling mistakes on this blog - it doesn't allow me to back and make any changes for some reason!