2014 SARRAH Conference

About the 2014 SARRAH National Conference

The 11th SARRAH National Conference was hosted by Mantra on Salt Beach in New South Wales and ran from 17-20 September 2014.

SARRAH chose Salt Beach for the 2014 SARRAH National Conference ’Surf's Up: Ride the Waves’. The conference provided a forum for the rural and remote allied health workforce, bureaucrats, educators and consumers to:

• Present on innovative local solutions to issues that can be applied to address similar issues nationally and across disciplines
• Have input and influence from the ‘grassroots' into national and state health policy and service delivery
• Demonstrate rural and remote allied health leadership in workforce and service delivery innovation
• Promote continuing education and professional development activities essential to support allied health professional practice in rural and remote Australia
• Promote rural and remote allied health research by professionals who practice in these areas and the presentation of research findings
• Develop supportive networks
• Promote good health and wellbeing through the delivery of allied health services to and by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in rural communities.

The conference attracted AHPs working in rural and remote areas and managers of these services; workforce planners, developers and funders of health policy and programs relating to rural and remote allied health services, educators of allied health professionals and consumers of these services who are interested in the dynamic developments in allied health services.

Allied health professions were considered to be those providing a clinical service with direct client contact involved in assessment, diagnosis, treatment, management, clinical intervention, rehabilitation, patient education and health promotion; with a recognised university degree or equivalent tertiary qualification. For example: audiologists, dietetics, medical radiation science, occupational therapy, optometry, orthoptics, orthotics and prosthetics, pharmacy, physiotherapy, podiatry, psychology, social work and speech pathology.

Conference Sponsors

SARRAH would like to thank the financial sponsors of the 2008 SARRAH National Conference for their support of this event