#NavigatingHealth – Enabling Patients, System-Wide
What do you get when you convene patients, professionals and policy makers? Possibilities!
The second annual forum for #NavigatingHealth was held on the inauspicious date of 1st April. Thanks to the support of Murray and South East Melbourne Primary Health Networks, the Nossal Institute for Global Health and the Centre for Health Policy, 80 individuals came together to consider our collective mission: to make it easier and more effective for patients to navigate health care.
Not an easy task, but the drive of our community and their passion to improve the paitent experience makes it one we are dedicated to !
Themed Velocity, Vision, Voice, Vignettes, Vitality and Vigor the forum participants focused on understanding what enables momentum (and what gets in the way), where are we trying to get to, snapshots of work underway and rolling sleeves up and getting practical .
Colleagues were charged to think what can I do myself, what can I do if I’m with an organisation, and what can we do at a systems level. Practical answers only – and remember there is no money!
Core to the day was the patient voice. From a fireside chat with Tim and Amanda, a raw, composite narrative from Anne, the focus was keeping the patient, their family and their context central – and thinking about health in the context of life and a life course. Most of us don’t think about a health care system until we encounter it .. and then ….
Our graphic Illustrator created a visual summary of the forum in real time capturing key points and discussions.
Creating a velocity for change is imperative. That’s why we are developing a #NavigatingHealth progress bar. Join us on 1st April 2026 to see how we have delivered in charting a course forward or if this meeting was a lot of good intention, not implemented. In the words of Alan Kay, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it”.
None of this is easy – that’s why we’re #connectingchangemakers. Our focus is collaboration, if you want to get involved please email us.
Siân Slade is an Enterprise Fellow (Honorary) and PhD Candidate based at the Nossal Institute for Global Health in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. Siân’s research is on the mechanisms enabling patients to navigate across health and related systems with a focus on streamlining health service access and improving the opportunity for equal outcomes.