We welcomed a lot of first timers to the Health Care Social Media Australia and New Zealand (#hcsmanz) tweetup held tonight. The relevance and immediacy of the topic due to the floods in Queensland may have had something to do with it.
The use of social media in disseminating information and correcting rumours by the Queensland Police Service during the flooding in Queensland and particularly Brisbane was praised by all.
Here are links to the transcript of this evening’s tweetup and links posted during the discussion
Health Care Social Media Australia and New Zealand
is a discussion group of interested professionals working in the health sphere in Australia and New Zealand have commenced a weekly discussion group on Twitter looking at the issues of social media use in health care. The hash-tag #hcsmanz is used to view the conversation. At other times the hash-tag is used to identify material that may be interesting to those in the discussion group.
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The tweetup is held each Sunday evening at 22:00NZ, 20:00AEDT, 19:00AEST, 19:30ACDT, 17:00AWST. Please come and join us.
If you wish to know more send a message to myself, Ed Butler or Ben Harris-Roxas or follow @hcsmanz on Twitter.
You can set up a hashtag #hcsmanz on your twitter-feed to follow and participate in the discussion and even subscribe to a “newspaper”, The #hcsmanz Daily to see the interesting links produced during the discussion.
There is a #hcsmanz page which shows the last 100 tweets and links to transcripts of each meeting.
We look forward to seeing you next week.
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The Queensland Government has committed $2 million to assist remote indigenous communities to prepare for extreme weather events. Indigenous Disaster Management Field Officers will be based in Indigenous communities. It will provide training for these officers to run disaster management exercises.
These Indigenous Disaster Management Field Officers are to work with Indigenous Councils with the following aims:
- enhance disaster management planning and exercises;
- recruit and support volunteers for disaster management roles; and
- encourage community leaders to be involved in disaster planning.
There is a need for these people.
Coastal and remote Indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of extreme events such as cyclone, storm surge and flooding.
Factors such as distance from major centres, proximity to the coast and the socio-economic status of community members can increase this vulnerability and influence the impact of events.
This two million dollars is to be spent over three years. In remote communities accommodation is scarce. I assume new people will be employed and brought into the community. If it is people already working in the community then they will have to be replaced and housing found. Basic houses in these areas can cost several hundred thousand to build.
Queensland is a large state. These field officers will have to travel extensively. So there will be significant costs with buying vehicles, fuel, airfares etc. With wages to be paid out of this program I can’t see too many field officers being employed.
This $2 million dollar Indigenous Disaster Management Field Officers initiative is a tiny part of a $196 million climate change strategy.
I think I will call it window dressing.
The bulletin is available for downloading: Keeping Our Mob Climate Safe (218)
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