Our Year in Review for 2019/20

Our Year in Review brings together highlights from the past 12 months of improving health outcomes for our communities.

Brisbane NorthPHN’s digital review includes a summary of what has been achieved in 2019/20 and includes videos, photo galleries and data about our programs delivered in collaboration with our community partners.

This year, the PHN delivered practice support, commissioned a range of community services and welcomed many new areas of work—all while adapting to an unprecedented healthcare frontier dominated by COVID-19.

Take a look at our Year in Review for more of our highlights, including:

• working with artist Riki Salam to develop our Reconciliation Action Plan artwork
• providing 8,279 older people with Commonwealth Home Support Program services
• farewelling a treasured CEO and welcoming our new CEO
• distributing over 160,000 masks to regional practices and pharmacies
• helping to establish three new mental health service hubs
• launching three new websites, including a completely redeveloped PHN site
• leading the work to develop a COVID-19 HealthPathway.

Many new services have commenced as we continue to implement Planning for Wellbeing, our joint regional plan with Metro North Hospital and Health Service covering mental health, suicide prevention and alcohol and other drugs.

Among these, the PHN funded three new integrated mental health service hubs from 1 July 2019 to support people with severe mental illness.

We have also refocused the Brisbane MIND program to provide short-term psychological therapies to underserviced population groups who have moderate mental illness and are experiencing financial hardship.

For parents needing perinatal mental health support, we published best practice guidelines for GPs through Brisbane North HealthPathways, providing advice, assessment and service referral information online.

We have also supported the rollout of GP Smart Referrals to enable faster, streamlined management of referrals and less double handling of referrals across Metro North HHS.

Our suicide prevention campaigns gained traction over the past year. These have included the ‘Talking Heals’ and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-focused ‘Yarns Heal’ campaigns supporting LGBTIQ+ people in our region, and the ‘Reasons to Stay’ campaign–all of which are funded through the National Suicide Prevention Trial.

These accomplishments would not be possible without the commitment of Brisbane North PHN staff and our community partners, who through their hard work and dedication continue to strive to meet our vision of a community where good health is available to everyone.

To read more visit https://yearinreview.brisbanenorthphn.org.au/