Adolescent Health Conference 2006

Conference report and pictures

The conference attracted 600 participants from 15 countries including 15 participants attending from Pacific countries supported by AUSAID. This truly Asia Pacific conference, with over 50 young people actively involved, was opened by Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC CVO, Governor of NSW, and also addressed by The New Zealand Minister for Youth, The Hon Nanaia Mahuta, and the NSW Minister for Health, The Hon. John Hatzistergos.

Addressed by The New Zealand Minister for Youth, The Hon Nanaia Mahuta

Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC CVO, Governor of NSW at the Conference with the Conference conveners, Dr Sue Towns, Department of Adolescent Medicine, Children's Hospital at Westmead and Clin A/Prof David Bennett, Head, NSW Centre for the Advancement of Adolescent Health

Certainly the conference provided a wonderful platform for capacity building in the youth health sector, initiating good will and better practice. Among other outcomes was a call for action for young people's health, the key points to improving youth health being:

positive attitudes towards young people
improving service access and delivery
collaborating across sectors.

The call to action:

We call upon the Federal Government, State Governments, policy makers and other decision makers to:

Take a leadership role by developing a National Youth Policy based on young people's ideas, knowledge and feedback
Increase youth representation by establishing and supporting key national bodies: Minister for Youth, Commissioner for Children and Young People, and a peak youth body
Increase resources and investment in services supporting youth health and wellbeing
Improve service coordination between sectors through strategic, collaborative planning processes
Ensure that young people are consulted and involved in meaningful ways, through formal and informal mechanisms (e.g. youth advisory councils and reference groups at local and state levels)
Enable young people's access to health services by ensuring that bulk billing is available, automatically issuing Medicare Cards to every young person at age 14, and providing youthfriendly information on services
Support positive representation of young people in the media

Conference delegates feedback on Conference Action Statement

Feedback

What was most enjoyed at the Conference - taken from 109 evaluation respondents:

involvement, Participation, Presentation of young people, young people as role models, and focus on consultation with young people; High quality Plenary sessions in particular Professor Strasburger, Rosie Swanton and Drama presentations from Highwater Theatre; Peter Slattery's workshop.
Networking & meeting new people, sharing ideas and meeting colleagues from other hospitals.
A friendly environment and relaxed atmosphere of equality
'the highlight for me was the enthusiastic proactive spirit of the participants and presenters'
'I just thought I would let you know that I had a fabulous day at the youth conference.It was excellent, there seems to be a very diverse audience of health professionals and I have already learnt a lot from today's presentations alone. Today included presentations from both professionals and young people which was fantastic, and discussions associated with young people's health, a very inspirational day.'