Chair Lourene Liebenberg said aside from keeping the community up to date on COVID-19, it included greater interaction with the community on health matters and the continuation of targeted education campaigns.
‘‘Our year started with a mental health campaign collaboration with Deniliquin Mental Health Awareness Group, running an eight week online and printed poster campaign — ‘We care about your mental health’.
‘‘The posters have had longevity, and have been displayed across the community in various settings.
‘‘This campaign was also adapted and made available to 33 Local Health Advisory Committees across the region.
‘‘We also ran a very successful men’s health campaign over the months of May and June, with 150 men attending a Blokes’ Night In.
‘‘Topics focused on mental health, prostate health, skin health and heart health.
‘‘This was a great success, with fantastic collaboration from our health service and providers, and of course the sponsors and the community.
‘‘We are certainly looking at ways to be able to repeat this event in the future.’’
Mrs Liebenberg said LHAC also maintained its work on advocacy around several health issues, resulting in ‘‘some productive outcomes around accurate and up to date information and communication’’.
‘‘This was in addition to much improved processes with regards to access and intake to the Murrumbidgee Local Health District Community Care Intake Service — the intake service for most of community and allied health — as well as women’s health clinic visits and expansion of evening hours.
‘‘Most of 2021 saw us working on collating health services information for the ‘Health and Wellbeing Directory’.
‘‘Although this seems like a simple task, it became imperative to ensure our services were in fact delivered as per the Murrumbidgee Primary Health Network and MLHD websites.
‘‘This started a number of processes by which we needed to advocate for clearer, updated and user-friendly information, to ensure accuracy in our directory.
‘‘The list of community organisations people can join for their wellbeing was distributed in October, and we hope to have the full directory ready for distribution early 2022.’’
Continued frustrations and ever changing rules relating to the COVID-19 pandemic also demanded a lot of time from Deni LHAC members of the past year.
Mrs Liebenberg said in addition to traditional media, social media became an important tool in getting information about border closures, lockdowns, roadmaps, testing and vaccination out as soon as possible.
‘‘Although intended for our Deni community, our social media quickly became the ‘go to place’ for many surrounding communities,’’ Mrs Liebenberg said.
‘‘We worked on being responsive and helping people access the information they needed to continue to access medical appointments and services throughout the year.
‘‘Of course, during Deni’s first COVID outbreak in October, we worked really hard to provide open an transparent information to the community.
‘‘Although this has taken up a lot of time, we also viewed this as an education tool for the community, preparing us moving into the phase of ‘living with COVID’ where individuals will look for their own information and manage their own risk.’’
That focus on COVID-19 also included advocating for the correct reporting of vaccination numbers for the region.
Despite anecdotal evidence and local vaccine data demonstrating otherwise, Federal Government data on vaccinations continued to list the Edward River region’s vaccination numbers as the lowest in the state.
‘‘The data errors were eventually acknowledged by all parties,’’ Mrs Liebenberg said.
‘‘And although the Commonwealth found it an impossible task to ‘fix’ the data, the message has been heard loud and clear by MLHD that our vaccination numbers are in line with the rest of our neighbouring communities, and evidence on this has been provided.
‘‘It was important for many reasons to get this acknowledged, and we are happy that we have had some outcomes from this.’’
The Deni LHAC committee includes Mrs Liebenberg, Lynda Barclay (vice chair), Lyn Bond, Meg Marshall, Chantelle Shevels, Julie Mullins, James Sides, Rhonda Dixon and Rachelle Austin.
Mrs Liebenberg said they were ably assisted throughout the year by Deniliquin Hospital facility manager Ginny Lange and cluster manager Craig McColm, ‘‘as well as the many staff working tirelessly in our health services’’.
‘‘Our thanks go out to all of our health providers in Deniliquin, for once again providing the best possible service they can under some very challenging conditions in 2021.
‘‘Thanks also goes to our committee of volunteers, for their support and commitment.
‘‘We are running a recruitment campaign and expressions of interest to join LHAC is currently open. Information can be found at https://www.mlhd.health.nsw.gov.au/get-involved/local-health-advisory-committee-(lhac).
‘‘Lastly, we wish to thank the community for supporting and engaging with our initiatives, and for trusting us to bring accurate information to the community.
‘‘We also thank you for reaching out and discussing your thoughts and ideas.
‘‘Ultimately, LHACs are the link between community and health and this means providing information to community, but also providing feedback from the community and advocating for consistent and reliable service delivery.
‘‘We wish all of our community a very merry Christmas and hope it is a special time for everyone.’’
