CDHN's 29th AGM & Networking Event
CDHN staff and Board would like to thank everyone who attended our 29th AGM and Annual Networking Event at Oxford Island, earlier in September. This year's theme was Communities Working and Learning Together to address Health Inequalities.
A special thanks to our guest speakers for sharing their valuable insights into tackling health inequalities at a local level. Gillian Lewis, Resurgam Trust Healthy Living Manager and Dr Lisa Cromey, Public Health Registrar, shared their research on Local Health and Wellbeing Profile in Lisburn which adapted a place-based informed approach to address health inequalities. The presentation is available to read here.
Jenny Marshall, MEAPP Executive Director of Community Programmes spoke about the role of community in population health and how asset-based community development was integral for impact at Agewell Partnership. The presentation is available to read here.
Helen McNamee, CDHN Research and Policy Manager presented CDHN’s newly launched research, 'Our Lives, Our Meds, Our Health: Exploring Medication Safety through a Social Lens'. Helen described how a community-based participatory approach was used to ensure the voice of people and communities were at the centre of the research. Findings highlighted the importance of gathering local knowledge and experience to shape research and policy. You can read the report here.
Kathy Martin, CDHN Strategic Impact Manager presented findings from CDHN’s recent Training and Support Needs Survey. Training and support are one of CDHN's key areas of work to develop understanding and skills in community-based approaches to tackle health inequalities.
At the event, roundtable discussions took place to help CDHN shape their future work in tackling health inequalities, and the importance of engagement with communities and partners to work together to shape policy to take collective action.
Some quotes from our members:
“CDHN is a great organisation helping to bring about positive change for our communities health and wellbeing.”
“People often living in health inequalities don’t know they are”.
“We need to take a holistic approach when identifying the level of support that someone requires – apply social lens e.g. housing, health, employment”.
Many thanks to the fantastic community and voluntary stallholders for coming along to our event to showcase their work. We really enjoyed meeting you all and hearing about the positive difference that you make in your communities.
You can read CDHN’s 2022-23 Annual Report here.
Congratulations to Denis Paisley from Resurgam Trust, the winner of our raffle for the free training from our Training and Support Survey.
