2009 has been a great year for H4H! We strengthened old ties, put some feelers out for the future, and we’ve made a lot of new friends along the way.
Team Camp – Go Team
This was the first year that H4H held a working weekend for the exec.council including the officers of our four student divisions: International; Rural; Community; and Indigenous. It was a great way to get a focus for the year, agree on major fundraisers, and get to know each other around the camp fire!
We followed up with the ever popular Midnight Muster, a B & S ball held out under the stars at Beaudesert. Everyone was sporting their best take on the country look with mullets and missin’ teeth a’plenty. YeeeeeeHaahhh! . . . Gotta love those fancy dress nights, people just can’t get enough! And you gotta give em what they want, and what they want is a party – H4H’s Back to the 80s Night. Full of bad hair and dance moves that should never have been taken back out of the closet - we rocked it all night long. And the crème de la crème (perhaps with a touch of crimson), RED PARTY!!!
These parties are a fun way to increase interest, membership and awareness of our club and the issues we support. They also serve to fund smaller projects within the club such as a clothing drive to Zimbabwe, the Teddy Bear Hospital project, and rural hospital trips.
Community: The T-Bear Hospital Project and the World’s Greatest Shav
e
I was proud to be part of the H4H ’09 team in the Leukemia Foundation’s ‘Shave for a Cure’. As the locks fell the donations soared to over $4,500, taking us bravely and baldly a step closer in the fight against childhood cancer.
Adapted from a similar program in the UK, H4H’s Teddy Bear Hospital is a great way in which we get involved with kids from the local community. The success of the program has given us a spot in the Griffith curriculum with medical students allowed to choose the TBH as a community placement rotation. The 5 min workshops run by our members focuses on health education in areas such as healthy eating, calling an ambulance, being sun smart, and medicine safety. We hope to extend the program to more local and state schools around the Gold Coast in future years.
Rural
If you’ve been on the rural circuit from Ballarat to Birdsville then you’ve undoubtedly met our rural officer, Jordan. Needless to say the rural club has been busy, busy, busy! This year we have extended our contacts with rural physicians giving our members more exposure to rural health and informed choices about working in the bush. Our commitment to rural health is to organize more rural placements for Griffith students.
Indigenous
Our indigenous health officer has been particularly active this year grounding the friendships of the past and looking at new ways of increasing health outcomes, interaction as well as exposure between our members and Indigenous Australia.
H4H, in conjunction with a Brisbane medical specialist centre, held its first Art Exhibition showcasing over 25 pieces contributed by prominent Indigenous artists Laurie Nilsen, Bianca Beetson, Jennifer Herd, and Robert Barton. The event, aimed to both raise funds and awareness, was opened by traditional song woman, Aunty Delma. It was a fun night watching people pull faces at pictures on the walls, and we even sold some art!
This year H4H proudly sponsored 16 members from across all Griffith Health Faculties camping and entrance to the Dreaming Festival celebrating Australian, Islander, and International Indigenous culture. While providing an opportunity for cultural awareness it challenged our members to have a damn good time amongst the feast of song, dance, and rhythms. They are still shaking in their roots!
Keeping with the festivals, H4H sent a small team down to Deadly Days, an Aboriginal youth festival on the Tweed Coast, NSW. It was a great day workshopping with other med. students from Bond, UNSW, and USyd, on a stall aimed at health promotion and career direction for young kids.
Career direction is a big part of H4H commitment to improving outcomes in Indigenous communities and this year’s Teddy Bear Hospital at the Cherbourg State School included an afternoon of persuading the older kids to consider careers in medicine, nursing, and allied health. Through such initiatives we hope to see more Indigenous youth in the corridors of hospitals beside us.
Future goals in for our Indigenous office include a Goal Steering committee between H4H and community members. Its aim would be to facilitate and guide ways that H4H can improve our reach in local Indigenous Australia on the Gold and Tweed Coasts.
International
H4H once again offered community development grant’s to 4th year Griffith Medical students on their international placements. Half of the grant is used to subsides the students travel expenses, while the other half goes directly to the community/hospital that they visit. The 2009 winners took medical supplies and textbooks to Tanzania and PNG.
Corporate
The Jazz Dinner Dance brought together some of the biggest names in medicine in S.E.Qld to raise money for the 2nd stage of development on the Dabba Hospital Project in Ghana. Raffle tickets flew off the stub as, along with donations, we raised close to $20,000 for the next stage of development.
With our Golf Day around the corner we expect many of our first year of alumni to take up the cause and swing a few rounds.