Wellness and wellbeing are buzzwords that mean a multitude of things to different people. Infusing wellness into the delivery of health care is therefore a challenge, not only for clinicians but for consumers as well.
Tasmania is setting out to do just this through the Tasmanian Wellness Framework project that will support and link together a number of existing and new initiatives to offer opportunities for both consumers and clinicians to develop and improve skills across chronic disease and pain self-management. The project will also engage with the community to find out what matters to people when we’re talking about health and wellness.
This project aims to develop a Wellness Framework for Tasmania to facilitate improved quality of life, participation in life and reduced medicalisation of life among people with chronic conditions in rural and regional communities of Tasmania. This will involve taking a co-design approach where consumers and clinicians partner more effectively to achieve the goal of being well.
Some of the more innovative things the project is supporting include clinical scholarships for equine assisted therapy, therapeutic art and dialectical behavior therapy; as well as providing opportunities for people with Parkinson’s disease to explore movement and music through stimulating and creative dance activities.
The project is collaborating with a range of organisations to build upon work already underway and to help establish initiatives that have been proven elsewhere. This includes the Local Pain Educator (LPE) Program which is partnering with the Wellness Framework project to promote and deliver scholarships in best practice pain education in Tasmania.
The project is also supporting the 2019 Pain Revolution Rural Outreach Ride. This will involve cyclists touring around Tasmania and running community and health professional education events in the towns they visit. The ride will finish in Hobart on 23 March 2019 to coincide with the start of the 15th National Rural Health Conference
The Wellness Framework project team hopes to collect information and data from its work for a ‘What Works Dashboard’ that demonstrates the efficacy of wellness focused activities that are being offered in Tasmania. This is particularly important as the project team is discovering a wealth of programs, services and initiatives already underway across Tasmanian health and community services that are delivering care and capacity building that reflect a wellness approach.
The project has only recently got off the ground and the team is looking forward to updating Partyline readers with its progress in early 2019.
The Department of Health, Tasmania is a sponsor of the 15th National Rural Health Conference, nipaluna/Hobart, 24-27 March 2019.
- Log in or register to post comments
