Working together to improve regional health care outcomes

The West Arnhem Aboriginal health/community and liaison workers all met in Jabiru earlier this month for the annual Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) workshop at the Mercure Kakadu Crocodile Hotel. This is the third of its kind in as many years.  
The purpose of these CQI workshops are to improve regional health care outcomes by identifying the main local health issues, implementing and monitoring corrective action and studying the effectiveness. In the case of positive outcomes, the service would ask whether health services are achieving desired outcomes as far as clients' health and wellbeing.  
This year the main discussions were around skin hygiene in the region and how to effectively engage communities on the eradication of scabies, for example.  
Scabies is directly related to rheumatic heart and renal diseases through Strep A infections. The group came up with some wonderful ideas in how to rally community members across the West Arnhem region to participate in community-wide eradication programs.  
The CQI Territory wide coordinator, Kerry Copley from AMASNT,  Senior Primary Health Care staff from TEHS, Meg Scolyer from One Disease and 25 of the regions up and coming local leaders in primary health care and community services workshopped ideas on these important health care issues and developed a plan for each community.  
It was a thoroughly enjoyable day, and we would like to thank all West Arnhem Health, community and liaison workers for attending and participating in developing program quality initiatives for the improvement of West Arnhem Public Health. A special thanks to the Crocodile Hotel and Jabiru Foodland for your kind support.